We study scaling limits of non-increasing Markov chains with values in the set of non-negative integers, under the assumption that the large jump events are rare and happen at rates that behave like a negative power of the current state. We show that the chain starting from $n$ and appropriately rescaled, converges in distribution, as $n\rightarrow \infty$, to a non-increasing self-similar Markov process. This convergence holds jointly with that of the rescaled absorption time to the time at which the self-similar Markov process reaches first 0. We discuss various applications to the study of random walks with a barrier, of the number of collisions in $Λ$-coalescents that do not descend from infinity and of non-consistent regenerative compositions. Further applications to the scaling limits of Markov branching trees are developed in our paper, Scaling limits of Markov branching trees, with applications to Galton--Watson and random unordered trees (2010).
We provide explicit conditions, in terms of the transition kernel of its driving particle, for a Markov branching process to admit a scaling limit toward a self-similar growth-fragmentation with negative index. We also derive a scaling limit for the genealogical embedding considered as a compact real tree.
This paper studies: (i) the long time behaviour of the empirical distribution of age and normalised position of an age dependent critical branching Markov process conditioned on non-extinction; and (ii) the super-process limit of a sequence of age dependent critical branching Brownian motions.
The goal of these lectures is to survey some of the recent progress on the description of large-scale structure of random trees. We use the framework of Markov-Branching sequences of trees and discuss several applications.
In this paper we consider heavy tailed Markov renewal processes and we prove that, suitably renormalised, they converge in law towards the $\ga$-stable regenerative set. We then apply these results to the strip wetting model which is a random walk $S$ constrained above a wall and rewarded or penalized when it hits the strip $[0,\infty) \times [0,a]$ where $a$ is a given positive number. The convergence result that we establish allows to characterize the scaling limit of this process at criticality.
We generalize recent results of Haas and Miermont to obtain scaling limits of Markov branching trees whose size is specified by the number of nodes whose out-degree lies in a given set. We then show that this implies that the scaling limit of finite variance Galton-Watson trees condition on the number of nodes whose out-degree lies in a given set is the Brownian continuum random tree. The key to this is a generalization of the classical Otter-Dwass formula.
In this work, we study a family of non-Markovian trees modeling populations where individuals live and reproduce independently with possibly time-dependent birth-rate and lifetime distribution. To this end, we use the coding process introduced by Lambert. We show that, in our situation, this process is no longer a L{é}vy process but remains a Feller process and we give a complete characterization of its generator. This allows us to study the model through well-known Markov processes techniques. On one hand, introducing a scale function for such processes allows us to get necessary and sufficie…
If $(C_n)$ is a Markov chain on a discrete state space ${\mathcal{S}}$, a Markov chain $(C_n,M_n)$ on the product space ${\mathcal{S}}\times{\mathcal{S}}$, the cat and mouse Markov chain, is constructed. The first coordinate of this Markov chain behaves like the original Markov chain and the second component changes only when both coordinates are equal. The asymptotic properties of this Markov chain are investigated. A representation of its invariant measure is, in particular, obtained. When the state space is infinite it is shown that this Markov chain is in fact null recurrent if the initial…
We introduce partial loop-erasing operators. We show that by applying a refinement sequence of partial loop-erasing operators to a finite Markov chain, we get a process equivalent to the chronological loop-erased Markov chain. As an application, we construct loop-erased random paths on bounded domains of resistance spaces as the weak limit of the loop erasure of the Markov chains on a sequence of finite sets approximating the space, and the limit is independent of the approximating sequences. The random paths we constructed are simple paths almost surely, and they can be viewed as the loop-era…
We study the convergence in rough path topology of a certain class of discrete processes, the hidden Markov walks, to a Brownian motion with an area anomaly. This area anomaly, which is a new object, keeps track of the time-correlation of the discrete models and brings into light the question of embeddings of discrete processes into continuous time. We also identify an underlying combinatorial structure in the hidden Markov walks, which turns out to be a generalization of the occupation time from the classical ergodic theorem in the spirit of rough paths.
We are interested in the asymptotic behavior of Markov chains on the set of positive integers for which, loosely speaking, large jumps are rare and occur at a rate that behaves like a negative power of the current state, and such that small positive and negative steps of the chain roughly compensate each other. If $X_{n}$ is such a Markov chain started at $n$, we establish a limit theorem for $\frac{1}{n}X_{n}$ appropriately scaled in time, where the scaling limit is given by a nonnegative self-similar Markov process. We also study the asymptotic behavior of the time needed by $X_{n}$ to reach…
We consider a family of random trees satisfying a Markov branching property. Roughly, this property says that the subtrees above some given height are independent with a law that depends only on their total size, the latter being either the number of leaves or vertices. Such families are parameterized by sequences of distributions on partitions of the integers that determine how the size of a tree is distributed in its different subtrees. Under some natural assumption on these distributions, stipulating that "macroscopic" splitting events are rare, we show that Markov branching trees admit the…
In this survey paper, we review the recent advances in individual based non--Markovian epidemic models. They include epidemic models with a constant infectivity rate, varying infectivity rate or infection-age dependent infectivity, infection-age recovery rate (or equivalently, general law of infectious period), as well as varying susceptibility/immunity. We focus on the scaling limits with a large population, functional law of large numbers (FLLN) and functional central limit theorems (FCLT), while the large and moderate deviations for some Markovian epidemic models are also reviewed. In the F…
In this note we consider a Markov chain formed by a finite system of interacting birth-and-death processes on a finite state space. We study an asymptotic behaviour of the Markov chain as its state space becomes large. In particular, we show that the appropriately scaled Markov chain converges to a diffusion process, and derive conditions for existence of the stationary distribution of the limit diffusion process in special cases.
In this paper, we investigate the probabilistic characteristics of a unit driven by Dichotomous Markov Noise (DMN), as an external random life increasing and decreasing shocks. Using DMN, we will define two new aging classes of the overall increasing/decreasing (OIL/ODL) nature in the long time behavior, which are separated by an exponential steady state regime. In addition, a moment inequality is derived for the system whose life distribution is in an overall life decreasing (ODL) class. We use this inequality to devise a nonparametric testing procedure for exponentiality against an alternati…
Given a target distribution $μ$ on a general state space $\mathcal{X}$ and a proposal Markov jump process with generator $Q$, the purpose of this paper is to investigate two universal properties enjoyed by two types of Metropolis-Hastings (MH) processes with generators $M_1(Q,μ)$ and $M_2(Q,μ)$ respectively. First, we motivate our study of $M_2$ by offering a geometric interpretation of $M_1$, $M_2$ and their convex combinations as $L^1$ minimizers between $Q$ and the set of $μ$-reversible generators of Markov jump processes. Second, specializing into the case of $\mathcal{X} = \mathbb{R}^d$ a…
Motivated by various applications, we describe the scaling limits of bivariate Markov chains $(X,J)$ on $\mathbb Z_+ \times \{1,\ldots,κ\}$ where $X$ can be viewed as a position marginal and $\{1,\ldots,κ\}$ is a set of $κ$ types. The chain starts from an initial value $(n,i)\in \mathbb Z_+ \times \{1,\ldots,κ\}$, with $i$ fixed and $n \rightarrow \infty$, and typically we will assume that the macroscopic jumps of the marginal $X$ are rare, i.e. arrive with a probability proportional to a negative power of the current state. We also assume that $X$ is non-increasing. We then observe different …
Let $(X_n)_{n\ge 0}$ be an irreducible, aperiodic, and homogeneous binary Markov chain and let $LI_n$ be the length of the longest (weakly) increasing subsequence of $(X_k)_{1\le k \le n}$. Using combinatorial constructions and weak invariance principles, we present elementary arguments leading to a new proof that (after proper centering and scaling) the limiting law of $LI_n$ is the maximal eigenvalue of a $2 \times 2$ Gaussian random matrix. In fact, the limiting shape of the RSK Young diagrams associated with the binary Markov random word is the spectrum of this random matrix.
Catastrophe Markov chain population models have received a lot of attention in the recent past. We herewith consider two special cases of such models involving total disasters, both in discrete and in continuous-time. Depending on the parameters range, the two models can show up a recurrence/transience transition and, in the critical case, a positive/null recurrence transition. The collapse transition probabilities are chosen in such a way that the models are exactly solvable and, in case of positive recurrence, intimately related to the extended Sibuya and Pareto-Zipf distributions whose divi…
Inspired by the recent work of Bertini and Posta, who introduced the boundary driven Brownian gas on $[0,1]$, we study boundary driven systems of independent particles in a general setting, including particles jumping on finite graphs and diffusion processes on bounded domains in $\mathbb{R}^d$. We prove duality with a dual process that is absorbed at the boundaries, thereby creating a general framework that unifies dualities for boundary driven systems in the discrete and continuum setting. We use duality first to show that from any initial condition the systems evolve to the unique invariant…
We introduce multi-type Markov Branching trees, which are simple random population tree models where individuals are characterized by their size and type and give rise to (size,type)-children in a Galton-Watson fashion, with the rule that the size of any individual is a least the sum of the sizes of its children. Assuming that macroscopic size-splittings are rare, we describe the scaling limits of multi-type Markov Branching trees in terms of multi-type self-similar fragmentation trees. We observe three different regimes according to whether the probability of type change of a size-biased chil…
We consider triangular arrays of Markov chains that converge weakly to a diffusion process. Second order Edgeworth type expansions for transition densities are proved. The paper differs from recent results in two respects. We allow nonhomogeneous diffusion limits and we treat transition densities with time lag converging to zero. Small time asymptotics are motivated by statistical applications and by resulting approximations for the joint density of diffusion values at an increasing grid of points.
Warning signs for tipping points (or critical transitions) have been very actively studied. Although the theory has been applied successfully in models and in experiments for many complex systems such as for tipping in climate systems, there are ongoing debates, when warning signs can be extracted from data. In this work, we shed light on this debate by considering different types of underlying noise. Thereby, we significantly advance the general theory of warning signs for nonlinear stochastic dynamics. A key scenario deals with stochastic systems approaching a bifurcation point dynamically u…
The production of molecules in a chemical reaction network is modelled as a Poisson process with a Markov-modulated arrival rate and an exponential decay rate. We analyze the distributional properties of $M$, the number of molecules, under specific time-scaling; the background process is sped up by $N^α$, the arrival rates are scaled by $N$, for $N$ large. A functional central limit theorem is derived for $M$, which after centering and scaling, converges to an Ornstein-Uhlenbeck process. A dichotomy depending on $α$ is observed. For $α\leq1$ the parameters of the limiting process contain the d…
We are interested by the rate of growth of increasing positive self-similar Markov processes (ipssMp) such that the subordinator associated to it via Lamperti's transformation has infinite mean. We prove that the logarithm of an ipssMp normalized by the logarithm of the time converges weakly, as the time tends to infinity, if and only if the Laplace exponent of the underlying subordinator is regularly varying at zero. Moreover, we prove that the regular variation at zero of the Laplace exponent is essentially nasc for the existence of a function that normalizes the logarithm of an ipssMp. We o…
The goal of the paper is to describe the large time behaviour of a Markov process associated with a symmetric diffusion in a high-contrast random environment and to characterize the limit semigroup and the limit process under the diffusive scaling.
Noncolliding Brownian motion (Dyson's Brownian motion model with parameter $β=2$) and noncolliding Bessel processes are determinantal processes; that is, their space-time correlation functions are represented by determinants. Under a proper scaling limit, such as the bulk, soft-edge and hard-edge scaling limits, these processes converge to determinantal processes describing systems with an infinite number of particles. The main purpose of this paper is to show the strong Markov property of these limit processes, which are determinantal processes with the extended sine kernel, extended Airy ker…
In Turitsyn, Chertkov, Vucelja (2011) a non-reversible Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) method on an augmented state space was introduced, here referred to as Lifted Metropolis-Hastings (LMH). A scaling limit of the magnetization process in the Curie-Weiss model is derived for LMH, as well as for Metropolis-Hastings (MH). The required jump rate in the high (supercritical) temperature regime equals $n^{1/2}$ for LMH, which should be compared to $n$ for MH. At the critical temperature the required jump rate equals $n^{3/4}$ for LMH and $n^{3/2}$ for MH, in agreement with experimental results of T…
This paper considers discretization of the Lévy process appearing in the Lamperti representation of a strictly positive self-similar Markov process. Limit theorems for the resulting approximation are established under some regularity assumptions on the given Lévy process. Additionally, the scaling limit of a positive self-similar Markov process at small times is provided. Finally, we present an application to simulation of self-similar Lévy processes conditioned to stay positive.
In this paper, we study Ornstein-Uhlenbeck processes with Markov modulation, whose parameters depend on an external underlying two-state Markov process. Conditional mean and variance of such processes under given modulation are investigated from the point of view of the first passage probabilities and invariant measures. It is also studied the limiting behaviour under scaling conditions similar to Kac's scaling.
Continuous time random walks (CTRWs) are versatile models for anomalous diffusion processes that have found widespread application in the quantitative sciences. Their scaling limits are typically non-Markovian, and the computation of their finite-dimensional distributions is an important open problem. This paper develops a general semi-Markov theory for CTRW limit processes in $\mathbb{R}^d$ with infinitely many particle jumps (renewals) in finite time intervals. The particle jumps and waiting times can be coupled and vary with space and time. By augmenting the state space to include the scali…
In this paper, the large deviations on trajectory level for ergodic Markov processes are studied. These processes take values in the non-negative quadrant of the two dimension lattice and are concentrated on step-wise functions. The rates of jumps towards the axes (jump down) depend on the position of the process -- the higher the position, the greater the rate. The rates of jumps going in the same direction as the axes (jump up) are constants. Therefore the processes are ergodic. The large deviations are studied under equal scalings of both space and time. The scaled versions of the processes…
Piecewise deterministic Markov processes are an important new tool in the design of Markov Chain Monte Carlo algorithms. Two examples of fundamental importance are the Bouncy Particle Sampler (BPS) and the Zig-Zag process (ZZ). In this paper scaling limits for both algorithms are determined. Here the dimensionality of the space tends towards infinity and the target distribution is the multivariate standard normal distribution. For several quantities of interest (angular momentum, first coordinate, and negative log-density) the scaling limits show qualitatively very different and rich behaviour…
Going from a scaling approach for birth/death processes, we investigate the scaling limit of solutions to non-Markovian stochastic control problems by studying the convergence of solutions to BSDEs driven a sequence of converging martingales. In particular we manage to describe how the values and optimal controls of control problems converge when the models converge towards a continuous population model.
We consider collections of $N$ chordal random curves obtained from a critical lattice model on a planar graph, in the limit when a fine-mesh graph approximates a simply-connected domain. We define and study candidates for such limits in terms of conformally invariant collections of random curves, generated via iterated Loewner equations. These curves are a natural ``domain Markov extension'' of the earlier introduced local multiple SLE initial segments to global multiple SLE curves. For realizing them as scaling limits, we provide two a priori results to guarantee the precompactness of the dis…
We consider a sequence of Markov chains weakly convergent to a diffusion. We suppose that a drift term contains a linearly increasing component. The usual parametrix method fails because of this unbounded drift term. We show how to modify the parametrix method to obtain local limit theorems for this case.
Our aim is to find sufficient conditions for weak convergence of stochastic integrals with respect to the state occupation measure of a Markov chain. First, we study properties of the state indicator function and the state occupation measure of a Markov chain. In particular, we establish weak convergence of the state occupation measure under a scaling of the generator matrix. Then, relying on the connection between the state occupation measure and the Dynkin martingale related to the state indicator function, we provide sufficient conditions for weak convergence of stochastic integrals with re…
The Bouncy Particle Sampler is a Markov chain Monte Carlo method based on a nonreversible piecewise deterministic Markov process. In this scheme, a particle explores the state space of interest by evolving according to a linear dynamics which is altered by bouncing on the hyperplane tangent to the gradient of the negative log-target density at the arrival times of an inhomogeneous Poisson Process (PP) and by randomly perturbing its velocity at the arrival times of an homogeneous PP. Under regularity conditions, we show here that the process corresponding to the first component of the particle …
We study random two-dimensional spanning forests in the plane that can be viewed both in the discrete case and in their appropriately taken scaling limits as a uniformly chosen spanning tree with some Poissonian deletion of edges or points. We show how to relate these scaling limits to a stationary distribution of a natural coalescent-type Markov process on a state-space of abstract graphs with real-valued edge-weights. This Markov process can be interpreted as a renormalization flow. This provides a model for which one can rigorously implement the formalism proposed by the third author in ord…
We study a limit behavior of a sequence of Markov processes (or Markov chains) such that their distributions outside of any neighborhood of a "singular" point attract to some probability law. In any neighborhood of this point the behavior may be irregular. As an example of the general result we consider a symmetric random walk with the unit jump that is perturbed in a neighborhood of 0. The invariance principle is obtained under standard scaling of time and space. The limit process turns out to be a skew Brownian motion.
We study the stochastic diffusive limit of a kinetic radiative transfer equation, which is non-linear, involving a small parameter and perturbed by a smooth random term. Under an appropriate scaling for the small parameter, using a generalization of the perturbed test-functions method, we show the convergence in law to a stochastic non-linear fluid limit.
We establish integral tests and laws of the iterated logarithm for the upper envelope of the future infimum of positive self-similar Markov processes and for increasing self-similar Markov processes at 0 and infinity. Our proofs are based on the Lamperti representation and time reversal arguments due to Chaumont and Pardo [9]. These results extend laws of the iterated logarithm for the future infimum of Bessel processes due to Khoshnevisan et al. [11].
Positive self-similar Markov processes (pssMp) are positive Markov processes that satisfy the scaling property and it is known that they can be represented as the exponential of a time-changed Lévy process via Lamperti representation. In this work, we are interested in the following problem: what happens if we consider Markov processes in dimension $1$ or $2$ that satisfy self-similarity properties of a more general form than a scaling property ? Can they all be represented as a function of a time-changed Lévy process ? If not, how can Lamperti representation be generalized ? We show that, not…
A semi-Markov process is one that changes states in accordance with a Markov chain but takes a random amount of time between changes. We consider the generalisation to semi-Markov processes of the classical Lamperti law for the occupation time of a two-state Markov process. We provide an explicit expression in Laplace space for the distribution of an arbitrary linear combination of the occupation times in the various states of the process. We discuss several consequences of this result. In particular, we infer the limiting distribution of this quantity rescaled by time in the long-time scaling…
We study K-processes, which are Markov processes in a denumerable state space, all of whose elements are stable, with the exception of a single state, starting from which the process enters finite sets of stable states with uniform distribution. We show how these processes arise, in a particular instance, as scaling limits of the REM-like trap model ``at low temperature'', and subsequently derive aging results for those models in this context.
For Markov processes evolving on multiple time-scales a combination of large component scalings and averaging of rapid fluctuations can lead to useful limits for model approximation. A general approach to proving a law of large numbers to a deterministic limit and a central limit theorem around it have already been proven in [16] and [17]. We present here a general approach to proving a large deviation principle in path space for such multi-scale Markov processes. Motivated by models arising in systems biology, we apply these large deviation results to general chemical reaction systems which e…
We provide Monte Carlo estimates of the scaling of the length $L_{n}$ of the longest increasing subsequences of $n$-steps random walks for several different distributions of step lengths, short and heavy-tailed. Our simulations indicate that, barring possible logarithmic corrections, $L_{n} \sim n^θ$ with the leading scaling exponent $0.60 \lesssim θ\lesssim 0.69$ for the heavy-tailed distributions of step lengths examined, with values increasing as the distribution becomes more heavy-tailed, and $θ\simeq 0.57$ for distributions of finite variance, irrespective of the particular distribution. …
When the number of particles is finite, the noncolliding Brownian motion (the Dyson model) and the noncolliding squared Bessel process are determinantal diffusion processes for any deterministic initial configuration $ξ=\sum_{j \in Λ} δ_{x_j}$, in the sense that any multitime correlation function is given by a determinant associated with the correlation kernel, which is specified by an entire function $Φ$ having zeros in $\supp ξ$. Using such entire functions $Φ$, we define new topologies called the $Φ$-moderate topologies. Then we construct three infinite-dimensional determinantal processes, …
We consider a collection of Markov chains that model the evolution of multitype biological populations. The state space of the chains is the positive orthant, and the boundary of the orthant is absorbing representing the extinction states of different population types. We are interested in the long-term behavior of the Markov chain away from extinction, under a small noise scaling. Under this scaling, the trajectory of the Markov process over any compact interval converges in distribution to the solution of an ordinary differential equation (ODE) evolving in the positive orthant. We study the …
In this paper we consider an additive functional of an observable $V(x)$ of a Markov jump process. We assume that the law of the expected jump time $t(x)$ under the invariant probability measure $π$ of the skeleton chain belongs to the domain of attraction of a subordinator. Then, the scaled limit of the functional is a Mittag-Leffler proces, provided that $Ψ(x):=V(x)t(x)$ is square integrable w.r.t. $π$. When the law of $Ψ(x)$ belongs to a domain of attraction of a stable law the resulting process can be described by a composition of a stable process and the inverse of a subordinator and thes…
