Likelihood Ratio Processes for Markovian Particle Systems with Killing and Jumps

We consider Markov processes built from pasting together pieces of strong Markov processes which are killed at a position dependent rate and connected via a transition kernel. We give necessary and sufficient conditions for local absolute continuity of probability laws for such processes on a suitable path space and derive an explicit formula for the corresponding likelihood ratio process. The main tool is the consideration of the process between successive jumps – what we call ‘elementary experiments’ – and criteria for absolute continuity of laws of the process there. We apply our results to systems of branching diffusions with interactions and immigrations. This revised version was published online in June 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Talagrand''''s T_2-transportation Inequality w.r.t.a Uniform Metric for Diffusions

Using the method of Girsanov transformation,we establish the Talagrand's T_2-inequality for dif-fusion on the path space C([0,N],R~d) with respect to a uniform metric,with the constant independent of N.This improves the known results for the L~2-metric.     

Sufficient Stochastic Maximum Principle for the Optimal Control of Jump Diffusions and Applications to Finance

We give a verification theorem by employing Arrow's generalization of the Mangasarian sufficient condition to a general jump diffusion setting and show the connections of adjoint processes to dynamic programming. The result is applied to financial optimization problems.     

One-dimensional ventsel-freidlin theory and its analogue for singular perturbations of degenerate diffusions

We make some remarks about deriving the large deviations estimates for the Ventsel-Freidlin perturbed system and adapt these methods to derive similar results for singular perturbations of degenerate one-dimensional diffusions where β and ω are independent Brownian motions. This corresponds to a singular perturbation of the degenerate second-order operator     

Strong ergodicity of the regime-switching diffusion processes

We provide criteria for the strong ergodicity of regime-switching diffusion processes. Our conditions are imposed on the coefficients of the processes. Particularly, we show that for regime-switching diffusions on the half line, if the corresponding diffusion on each fixed environment is strongly ergodic, then the regime-switching diffusion is strongly ergodic as well, which does not depend on the changing rate of the environment. Moreover, the converse is not always true, which is shown by an example. For transience, recurrence and positive recurrence, there is no such good consistency [R. Pinsky and M. Scheutzow, Some remarks and examples concerning the transience and recurrence of random diffusions, Ann. Inst. Henri. Poincaré 28 (1992) 519–536].     

Non parametric estimation of the diffusion coefficients of a diffusion with jumps

In this article, we consider a jump diffusion process ${\left(X_t\right)}_{t\ge 0}$, with drift function $b$, diffusion coefficient $\sigma$ and jump coefficient ${\xi }^2$. This process is observed at discrete times $t=0,\Delta ,\dots ,n\Delta$. The sampling interval $\Delta$ tends to 0 and the time interval $n\Delta$ tends to infinity. We assume that ${\left(X_t\right)}_{t\ge 0}$ is ergodic, strictly stationary and exponentially $\beta$-mixing. We use a penalized least-square approach to compute adaptive estimators of the functions ${\sigma }^2+{\xi }^2$ and ${\sigma }^2$. We provide bounds for the risks of the two estimators.     

Talagrand＇s T2-transportation Inequality w.r.t, a Uniform Metric for Diffusions

Using the method of Girsanov transformation, we establish the Talagrand‘s T2-inequality for diffusion on the path space C([0, N], R^d) with respect to a uniform metric, with the constant independent of N. This improves the known results for the L2-metric.     

On the stationary measures of anharmonic systems in the presence of a small thermal noise

We consider certain small stochastic perturbations of ad-dimensional infinite system of coupled anharmonic oscillators. The evolution law is reversible in the Yaglom sense, thus Gibbs states with the given interaction and temperature are stationary measures. If d<3 then some stability properties of the interaction imply the converse statement; if d>2 then the same is proven for translation invariant measures only. The methods and results of Ref. 4, 6–8 are extended to second-order systems of stochastic differential equations.     

On the Uniform Convergence of the Empirical Density of an Ergodic Diffusion

We investigate the uniform convergence of the density of the empirical measure of an ergodic diffusion. It is known that under certain conditions on the drift and diffusion coefficients of the diffusion, the empirical density f _t converges in probability to the invariant density f, uniformly on the entire real line. We show that under the same conditions, uniform convergence of f _t to f on compact intervals takes place almost surely. Moreover, we prove that under much milder conditions (the usual linear growth condition on the drift and diffusion coefficients and a finite second moment of the invariant measure suffice), we have the uniform convergence of f _t to f on compacta in probability. This revised version was published online in June 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.