We continue the analysis of the problem of metastability for reversible diffusion processes, initiated in [BEGK3], with a precise analysis of the low-lying spectrum of the generator. Recall that we are considering processes with generators of the form $-ϵ\Delta +\nabla F(·)\nabla$ on ${ℝ}^d$ or subsets of ${ℝ}^d$, where $F$ is a smooth function with finitely many local minima. Here we consider only the generic situation where the depths of all local minima are different. We show that in general the exponentially small part of...

We consider the stochastic differential equation $X_t=X₀+{\int }_0^t(A_s+B_s{X}_s)ds+{\int }_0^t{C}_{s}d{Y}_s$, where $A_t$, $B_t$, $C_t$ are nonrandom continuous functions of t, X₀ is an initial random variable, $Y=(Y_t,t\ge 0)$ is a Gaussian process and X₀, Y are independent. We give the form of the solution ($X_t$) to (0.1) and then basing on the results of Plucińska [Teor. Veroyatnost. i Primenen. 25 (1980)] we prove that ($X_t$) is a quasi-diffusion proces.

A linear Boltzmann equation is interpreted as the forward equation for the probability density of a Markov process $\left(K\right(t),i(t),Y(t\left)\right)$ on $({𝕋}^2\times \{1,2\}\times {ℝ}^2)$, where ${𝕋}^2$ is the two-dimensional torus. Here $\left(K\right(t),i(t\left)\right)$ is an autonomous reversible jump process, with waiting times between two jumps with finite expectation value but infinite variance. $Y\left(t\right)$ is an additive functional of $K$, defined as ${\int }_0^{t}v\left(K\left(s\right)\right)\mathrm{d}s$, where $\left|v\right|\sim 1$ for small $k$. We prove that the rescaled process ${(NlnN)}^{-1/2}Y\left(Nt\right)$ converges in distribution to a two-dimensional Brownian motion. As a consequence,...

A notion of a wide-sense Markov process $X_t$ of order k ≥ 1, $X_t\sim WM\left(k\right)$, is introduced as a direct generalization of Doob’s notion of wide-sense Markov process (of order k=1 in our terminology). A base for investigation of the covariance structure of $X_t$ is the k-dimensional process $x_t=(X_{t-k+1},...,X_t)$. The covariance structure of $X_t\sim WM\left(k\right)$ is considered in the general case and in the periodic case. In the general case it is shown that $X_t\sim WM\left(k\right)$ iff $x_t$ is a k-dimensional WM(1) process and iff the covariance function of $x_t$ has the triangular...

In this paper we establish a decoupling feature of the random interlacement process ${ℐ}^u\subset {\mathbb{Z}}^d$ at level $u$, $d\ge 3$. Roughly speaking, we show that observations of ${ℐ}^u$ restricted to two disjoint subsets $A_1$ and $A_2$ of ${\mathbb{Z}}^d$ are approximately independent, once we add a sprinkling to the process ${ℐ}^u$ by slightly increasing the parameter $u$. Our results differ from previous ones in that we allow the mutual distance between the sets $A_1$ and $A_2$ to be much smaller than their diameters. We then provide an important application...

Let $X$ be a $\mu$-symmetric Hunt process on a LCCB space $𝙴$. For an open set $𝙶\subseteq 𝙴$, let ${\tau }_{𝙶}$ be the exit time of $X$ from $𝙶$ and $A^{𝙶}$ be the generator of the process killed when it leaves $𝙶$. Let $r:[0,\infty [\to [0,\infty [$ and $R\left(t\right)={\int }_0^{t}r\left(s\right)\mathrm{d}s$. We give necessary and sufficient conditions for ${𝔼}_{\mu }R\left({\tau }_{𝙶}\right)lt;\infty$ in terms of the behavior near the origin of the spectral measure of $-A^{𝙶}$. When $r\left(t\right)=t^l$, $l\ge 0$, by means of this condition we derive the Nash inequality for the killed process. In the diffusion case this permits to show that the existence of moments of order $l+1$ for ${\tau }_{𝙶}$...

This paper considers the initial-boundary value problem for the nonlinear diffusion equation with the perturbation term $$u_t+(-\Delta +1)\beta \left(u\right)+G\left(u\right)=g\text{in}\Omega \times (0,T)$$ in an unbounded domain $\Omega \subset {ℝ}^N$ with smooth bounded boundary, where $N\in \mathbb{N}$, $T>0$, $\beta$, is a single-valued maximal monotone function on $ℝ$, e.g., $$\beta \left(r\right)={\left|r\right|}^{q-1}r(q>0,q\ne 1)$$ and $G$ is a function on $ℝ$ which can be regarded as a Lipschitz continuous operator from ${\left(H^1\left(\Omega \right)\right)}^{*}$ to ${\left(H^1\left(\Omega \right)\right)}^{*}$. The present work establishes existence and estimates for the above problem.

We study a one-dimensional stochastic differential equation driven by a stable Lévy process of order $\alpha$ with drift and diffusion coefficients $b$, $\sigma$. When $\alpha \in (1,2)$, we investigate pathwise uniqueness for this equation. When $\alpha \in (0,1)$, we study another stochastic differential equation, which is equivalent in law, but for which pathwise uniqueness holds under much weaker conditions. We obtain various results, depending on whether $\alpha \in (0,1)$ or $\alpha \in (1,2)$ and on whether the driving stable process is symmetric or not. Our...

This paper provides blow up results of Fujita type for a reaction-diffusion system of 3 equations in the form $uₜ-\Delta \left(a_{11}u\right)=h(t,x){\left|v\right|}^p$, $vₜ-\Delta \left(a_{21}u\right)-\Delta \left(a_{22}v\right)=k(t,x){\left|w\right|}^q$, $wₜ-\Delta \left(a_{31}u\right)-\Delta \left(a_{32}v\right)-\Delta \left(a_{33}w\right)=l(t,x){\left|u\right|}^r$, for $x\in {ℝ}^N$, t > 0, p > 0, q > 0, r > 0, $a_{ij}=a_{ij}(t,x,u,v)$, under initial conditions u(0,x) = u₀(x), v(0,x) = v₀(x), w(0,x) = w₀(x) for $x\in {ℝ}^N$, where u₀, v₀, w₀ are nonnegative, continuous and bounded functions. Subject to conditions on dependence on the parameters p, q, r, N and the growth of the functions h, k, l at infinity, we prove finite blow up time for every solution of the...

In this paper we are concerned with a class of time-varying discounted Markov decision models ${ℳ}_n$ with unbounded costs $c_n$ and state-action dependent discount factors. Specifically we study controlled systems whose state process evolves according to the equation $x_{n+1}=G_n(x_n,a_n,{\xi }_n),n=0,1,...$, with state-action dependent discount factors of the form ${\alpha }_n(x_n,a_n)$, where $a_n$ and ${\xi }_n$ are the control and the random disturbance at time $n$, respectively. Assuming that the sequences of functions $\left\{{\alpha }_n\right\}$,$\left\{c_n\right\}$ and $\left\{G_n\right\}$ converge, in certain sense, to ${\alpha }_{\infty }$,...

In this paper we examine self-similar solutions to the system $u_{it}-d_i\Delta u_i={\prod }_{k=1}^m{u}_k^{p_k^i}$, i = 1,…,m, $x\in {ℝ}^N$, t > 0, $u_i(0,x)=u_{0i}\left(x\right)$, i = 1,…,m, $x\in {ℝ}^N$, where m > 1 and $p_k^i>0$, to describe asymptotics near the blow up point.

For lower-semicontinuous and convex stochastic processes $Z_n$ and nonnegative random variables ${ϵ}_n$ we investigate the pertaining random sets $A(Z_n,{ϵ}_n)$ of all ${ϵ}_n$-approximating minimizers of $Z_n$. It is shown that, if the finite dimensional distributions of the $Z_n$ converge to some $Z$ and if the ${ϵ}_n$ converge in probability to some constant $c$, then the $A(Z_n,{ϵ}_n)$ converge in distribution to $A(Z,c)$ in the hyperspace of Vietoris. As a simple corollary we obtain an extension of several argmin-theorems in the literature. In particular,...

We prove the existence of uniform attractors ${}_{\epsilon }$ in the space $H¹\left({ℝ}^N\right)$ for the nonautonomous nonclassical diffusion equation $u_t-\epsilon \Delta u_t-\Delta u+f(x,u)+\lambda u=g(x,t)$, ε ∈ [0,1]. The upper semicontinuity of the uniform attractors ${{}_{\epsilon }}_{\epsilon \in [0,1]}$ at ε = 0 is also studied.

Let E be a compact set in the complex plane, $g_E$ be the Green function of the unbounded component of ${ℂ}_{\infty }\setminus E$ with pole at infinity and $Mₙ\left(E\right)=sup\left(\right||P^{\text{'}}{\left|\right|}_E{)/(\left|\right|P\left|\right|}_E)$ where the supremum is taken over all polynomials ${P|}_E\not\equiv 0$ of degree at most n, and ${\left|\right|f\left|\right|}_E=sup\left|f\right(z\left)\right|:z\in E$. The paper deals with recent results concerning a connection between the smoothness of $g_E$ (existence, continuity, Hölder or Lipschitz continuity) and the growth of the sequence ${Mₙ\left(E\right)}_{n=1,2,...}$. Some additional conditions are given for special classes of sets.

We prove smoothing properties of nonlocal transition semigroups associated to a class of stochastic differential equations (SDE) in ${ℝ}^d$ driven by additive pure-jump Lévy noise. In particular, we assume that the Lévy process driving the SDE is the sum of a subordinated Wiener process $Y$ (i.e. $Y=W\circ T$, where $T$ is an increasing pure-jump Lévy process starting at zero and independent of the Wiener process $W$) and of an arbitrary Lévy process independent of $Y$, that the drift coefficient is continuous...

We study nonlinear diffusion problems of the form $u_t=u_{xx}+f\left(u\right)$ with free boundaries. Such problems may be used to describe the spreading of a biological or chemical species, with the free boundary representing the expanding front. For special $f\left(u\right)$ of the Fisher-KPP type, the problem was investigated by Du and Lin [DL]. Here we consider much more general nonlinear terms. For any $f\left(u\right)$ which is $C^1$ and satisfies $f\left(0\right)=0$, we show that the omega limit set $\omega \left(u\right)$ of every bounded positive solution is determined by a stationary...

In this paper, we consider the linear and circular consecutive $k$-out-of-$n$ systems consisting of arbitrarily dependent components. Under the condition that at least $n-r+1$ components ($r\le n$) of the system are working at time $t$, we study the reliability properties of the residual lifetime of such systems. Also, we present some stochastic ordering properties of residual lifetime of consecutive $k$-out-of-$n$ systems. In the following, we investigate the inactivity time of the component with lifetime...

We consider “nonconventional” averaging setup in the form $\frac{\mathrm{d}{X}^{\epsilon }\left(t\right)}{\mathrm{d}t}=\epsilon B(X^{\epsilon }\left(t\right)$, $𝛯\left(q_1\left(t\right)\right),𝛯\left(q_2\left(t\right)\right),...,𝛯\left(q_{\ell }\left(t\right)\right))$ where $𝛯\left(t\right)$, $t\ge 0$ is either a stochastic process or a dynamical system with sufficiently fast mixing while $q_j\left(t\right)={\alpha }_{j}t$, ${\alpha }_{1}lt;{\alpha }_{2}lt;\cdots lt;{\alpha }_k$ and $q_j$, $j=k+1,...,\ell$ grow faster than linearly. We show that the properly normalized error term in the “nonconventional” averaging principle is asymptotically Gaussian.

In the present work, we consider spectrally positive Lévy processes $(X_t,t\ge 0)$ not drifting to $+\infty$ and we are interested in conditioning these processes to reach arbitrarily large heights (in the sense of the height process associated with $X$) before hitting $0$. This way we obtain a new conditioning of Lévy processes to stay positive. The (honest) law ${\mathbb{P}}_x^{☆}$ of this conditioned process (starting at $xgt;0$) is defined as a Doob $h$-transform via a martingale. For Lévy processes with infinite variation paths,...

Let $m\ge 3$ be an integer. The so-calledis a discrete time Markov chain which is very popular in theoretical computer science, modelling famous algorithms used in searching and sorting. This random process satisfies a well-known phase transition: when $m\le 26$, the asymptotic behavior of the process is Gaussian, but for $m\ge 27$ it is no longer Gaussian and a limit $W^{DT}$ of a complex-valued martingale arises. In this paper, we consider the multitype branching process which is the continuous time version of...

Let Ω be an open subset of ${ℝ}^d$ with 0 ∈ Ω. Furthermore, let $H_{\Omega }=-{\sum }_{i,j=1}^d{\partial }_i{c}_{ij}{\partial }_j$ be a second-order partial differential operator with domain $C_c^{\infty }\left(\Omega \right)$ where the coefficients $c_{ij}\in W_{loc}^{1,\infty }\left(\Omega ̅\right)$ are real, $c_{ij}=c_{ji}$ and the coefficient matrix $C=\left(c_{ij}\right)$ satisfies bounds 0 < C(x) ≤ c(|x|)I for all x ∈ Ω. If ${\int }_0^{\infty }ds{s}^{d/2}{e}^{-\lambda \mu \left(s\right)²}<\infty$ for some λ > 0 where $\mu \left(s\right)={\int }_0^{s}dtc{\left(t\right)}^{-1/2}$ then we establish that $H_{\Omega }$ is L₁-unique, i.e. it has a unique L₁-extension which generates a continuous semigroup, if and only if it is Markov unique, i.e. it has a unique L₂-extension which generates a submarkovian semigroup....