This paper calculates several useful statistical properties of the convex minorant process generated by random walk processes. In particular, we calculate the statistics of the longest segment in the convex minorant of a random walk of a given length. In addition, we calculate the probability that the convex minorant of a random walk of length N is composed of exactly m segments; we give an exact formula for the expected number of segments in the convex minorant. We obsevere that some of this analysis can be meaningful for the case of Brownian motion on finite intervals; we can calculate exact formulas for the density of the length of the longest segment in the convex minorant of Brownian motion on finite intervals.
This article contains both a point process and a sequential description of the greatest convex minorant of Brownian motion on a finite interval. We use these descriptions to provide new analysis of various features of the convex minorant such as the set of times where the Brownian motion meets its minorant. The equivalence of the these descriptions is non-trivial, which leads to many interesting identities between quantities derived from our analysis. The sequential description can be viewed as a Markov chain for which we derive some fundamental properties.
We prove distributional limit theorems for the length of the largest convex minorant of a one-dimensional random walk with independent identically distributed increments. Depending on the increment law, there are several regimes with different limit distributions for this length. Among other tools, a representation of the convex minorant of a random walk in terms of uniform random permutations is utilized.
This article provides an overview of recent work on descriptions and properties of the convex minorant of random walks and Lévy processes which summarize and extend the literature on these subjects. The results surveyed include point process descriptions of the convex minorant of random walks and Lévy processes on a fixed finite interval, up to an independent exponential time, and in the infinite horizon case. These descriptions follow from the invariance of these processes under an adequate path transformation. In the case of Brownian motion, we note how further special properties of this pro…
For $α> 0$, the $α$-Lipschitz minorant of a function $f: \mathbb{R} \to \mathbb{R}$ is the greatest function $m : \mathbb{R} \to \mathbb{R}$ such that $m \leq f$ and $|m(s)-m(t)| \le α|s-t|$ for all $s,t \in \mathbb{R}$, should such a function exist. If $X=(X_t)_{t \in \mathbb{R}}$ is a real-valued Lévy process that is not pure linear drift with slope $\pm α$, then the sample paths of $X$ have an $α$-Lipschitz minorant almost surely if and only if $| \mathbb{E}[X_1] | < α$. Denoting the minorant by $M$, we investigate properties of the random closed set $\mathcal{Z} := {t \in \mathbb{R} : M_t …
It is well known that the isotonic least squares estimator is characterized as the derivative of the greatest convex minorant of a random walk. Provided the walk has exchangeable increments, we prove that the slopes of the greatest convex minorant are distributed as order statistics of the running averages. This result implies an exact non-asymptotic formula for the squared error risk of least squares in isotonic regression when the true sequence is constant that holds for every exchangeable error distribution.
The sequence of the simple random walks on Hamming schemes $\{H(n, q)\}_{n=1}^{\infty}$ has a cutoff phenomenon for each integer $q$ greater than or equal to $3$. In this paper, for the sequence of simple random walks on Hamming schemes $\{H(n, q)\}_{n=1}^{\infty}$ with $q\geq 3$, we give a simple majorant and a sharp minorant function for total variance distances between transition distributions and stationary distributions.
We prove a scaling limit result for random walk on certain random planar maps with its natural time parametrization. In particular, we show that for $γ\in (0,2)$, the random walk on the mated-CRT map with parameter $γ$ converges to $γ$-Liouville Brownian motion, the natural quantum time parametrization of Brownian motion on a $γ$-Liouville quantum gravity (LQG) surface. Our result applies if the mated-CRT map is embedded into the plane via the embedding which comes from SLE / LQG theory or via the Tutte embedding (a.k.a. the harmonic or barycentric embedding). In both cases, the convergence is…
The purpose of this paper is to highlight some hidden Markovian structure of the concave majorant of the Brownian motion. Several distributional identities are implied by the joint law of a standard one-dimensional Brownian motion $B$ and its almost surely unique concave majorant $K$ on $[0,\infty)$. In particular, the one-dimensional distribution of $2 K_t - B_t$ is that of $R_5(t)$, where $R_5$ is a $5-$dimensional Bessel process with $R_5(0) = 0$. The process $2K-B$ shares a number of other properties with $R_5$, and we conjecture that it may have the distribution of $R_5$. We also describe…
We have shown recently how to calculate the large deviation function of the position $X_{\max}(t) $ of the right most particle of a branching Brownian motion at time $t$. This large deviation function exhibits a phase transition at a certain negative velocity. Here we extend this result to more general branching random walks and show that the probability distribution of $X_{\max}(t)$ has, asymptotically in time, a prefactor characterized by non trivial power law.
We consider a long-range version of self-avoiding walk in dimension $d > 2(α\wedge 2)$, where $d$ denotes dimension and $α$ the power-law decay exponent of the coupling function. Under appropriate scaling we prove convergence to Brownian motion for $α\ge 2$, and to $α$-stable Lévy motion for $α< 2$. This complements results by Slade (1988), who proves convergence to Brownian motion for nearest-neighbor self-avoiding walk in high dimension.
We present a random walk approximation to fractional Brownian motion where the increments of the fractional random walk are defined as a weighted sum of the past increments of a Bernoulli random walk.
We establish the Brownian bridge asymptotics for a scaled self-avoiding walk conditioned on arriving to a far away point $n \vec{a}$ for $\vec{a}$ in $Z^d$, as $n$ increases to infinity.
We present a duality relation between two systems of coalescing random walks and an analogous duality relation between two systems of coalescing Brownian motions. Our results extends previous work in the literature and we apply it to the study of a system of coalescing Brownian motions with Poisson immigration.
Brownian motion is a well-known model for normal diffusion, but not all physical phenomena behave according to a Brownian motion. Many phenomena exhibit irregular diffusive behavior, called anomalous diffusion. Examples of anomalous diffusion have been observed in physics, hydrology, biology, and finance, among many other fields. Continuous-time random walks (CTRWs), introduced by Montroll and Weiss, serve as models for anomalous diffusion. CTRWs generalize the usual random walk model by allowing random waiting times between successive random jumps. Under certain conditions on the jumps and wa…
In this article, we show a result of approximation in law to subfractional Brownian motion, with $H>\frac{1}{2}$, in the Skorohod topology. The construction of these approximations is based on a sequence of I.I.D random variables
Considering quantum random walks, we construct discrete-time approximations of the eigenvalues processes of minors of Hermitian Brownian motion. It has been recently proved by Adler, Nordenstam and van Moerbeke that the process of eigenvalues of two consecutive minors of an Hermitian Brownian motion is a Markov process, whereas if one considers more than two consecutive minors, the Markov property fails. We show that there are analog results in the noncommutative counterpart and establish the Markov property of eigenvalues of some particular submatrices of Hermitian Brownian motion.
We derive asymptotics for the probability of the origin to be an extremal point of a random walk in R^n. We show that in order for the probability to be roughly 1/2, the number of steps of the random walk should be between e^{c n / log n}$ and e^{C n log n}. As a result, we attain a bound for the ?pi/2-covering time of a spherical brownian motion.
Let $ξ(k,n)$ be the local time of a simple symmetric random walk on the line. We give a strong approximation of the centered local time process $ξ(k,n)-ξ(0,n)$ in terms of a Wiener sheet and an independent Wiener process, time changed by an independent Brownian local time. Some related results and consequences are also established.
We introduce a Multifractal Random Walk (MRW) defined as a stochastic integral of an infinitely divisible noise with respect to a dependent fractional Brownian motion. Using the techniques of the Malliavin calculus, we study the existence of this object and its properties. We then propose a continuous time model in finance that captures the main properties observed in the empirical data, including the leverage effect. We illustrate our result by numerical simulations.
Recent works have shown that an instance of a Brownian surface (such as the Brownian map or Brownian disk) a.s. has a canonical conformal structure under which it is equivalent to a $\sqrt{8/3}$-Liouville quantum gravity (LQG) surface. In particular, Brownian motion on a Brownian surface is well-defined. The construction in these works is indirect, however, and leaves open a basic question: is Brownian motion on a Brownian surface the limit of simple random walk on increasingly fine discretizations of that surface, the way Brownian motion on $\mathbb R^2$ is the $ε\to 0$ limit of simple random…
The purpose of this note is to collect in one place a few results about simple random walk and Brownian motion which are often useful. These include standard results such as Beurling estimates, large deviation estimates, and a method for coupling the two processes, as well as solutions to the discrete Dirichlet problem in various domains which, to the author's knowledge, have not been published anywhere. The main focus is on the two-dimensional processes.
In this paper we define Brownian local time as the almost sure limit of the local times of a nested sequence of simple, symmetric random walks. The limit is jointly continuous in $(t,x)$. The rate of convergence is $n^{\frac14} (\log n)^{\frac34}$ that is close to the best possible. The tools we apply are almost exclusively from elementary probability theory.
A simple random walk and a Brownian motion are considered on a spider that is a collection of half lines (we call them legs) joined in the origin. We give a strong approximation of these two objects and their local times. For fixed number of legs we establish limit theorems on local and occupation times in n steps.
Using quantum parallelism on random walks as original seed, we introduce new quantum stochastic processes, the open quantum Brownian motions. They describe the behaviors of quantum walkers -- with internal degrees of freedom which serve as random gyroscopes -- interacting with series of probes. These processes may also be viewed as the scaling limit of open quantum random walks and we develop this approach along three different lines: quantum trajectory, quantum dynamical map, and quantum stochastic differential equation. We also present a study of the simplest case, with a two level system as…
In this article it is shown that the Brownian motion on the continuum random tree is the scaling limit of the simple random walks on any family of discrete $n$-vertex ordered graph trees whose search-depth functions converge to the Brownian excursion as $n\to\infty$. We prove both a quenched version (for typical realisations of the trees) and an annealed version (averaged over all realisations of the trees) of our main result. The assumptions of the article cover the important example of simple random walks on the trees generated by the Galton-Watson branching process, conditioned on the total…
We focus on the existence and its characterization of limit for a certain critical branching random walks in time-space random environment in 1 dimension which was introduced by Birkner et.al. Each particle performs simple random walk on $\mathbb{Z}$ and branching mechanism depends on the time-space site. The weak limit points of this measure valued processes are characterized as a solution of the non-trivial martingale problem and called super-Brownian motions in random environment by Mytnik.
We analyze the Brownian Motion limit of a prototypical unit step reinforced random-walk on the half line. A reinforced random walk is one which changes the weight of any edge (or vertex) visited to increase the frequency of return visits. The generating function for the discrete case is first derived for the joint probability distribution of $S_N$ (the location of the walker at the $N$^{th}$ step) and $A_N$ the maximum location the walker achieved in $N$ steps. Then the bulk of the analysis concerns the statistics of the limiting Brownian walker, and of its "environment", both parametrized by …
We focus on the existence and characterization of the limit for a certain critical branching random walks in time-space random environment in one dimension which was introduced by M. Birnkenr et.al. Each particle performs simple random walk on $\mathbb{Z}$ and branching mechanism depends on the time-space site. The weak limit of this measure valued processes is characterized as a solution to the non-trivial martingale problem and called super-Brownian motions in random environment by L. Mytnik. Moreover, we will show the weak uniqueness of the solutions with some initial condition.
We consider the continuous time symmetric random walk with a slow bond on $\mathbb Z$, which rates are equal to $1/2$ for all bonds, except for the bond of vertices $\{-1,0\}$, which associated rate is given by $αn^{-β}/2$, where $α\geq 0$ and $β\in [0,\infty]$ are the parameters of the model. We prove here a functional central limit theorem for the random walk with a slow bond: if $β<1$, then it converges to the usual Brownian motion. If $β\in (1,\infty]$, then it converges to the reflected Brownian motion. And at the critical value $β=1$, it converges to the snapping out Brownian motion (SNO…
In this note, we prove an $L^p$ uniform approximation of the fractional Brownian motion with Hurst exponent $0 < H < \frac{1}{2}$ by means of a family of continuous-time random walks imbedded on a given Brownian motion. The approximation is constructed via a pathwise representation of the fractional Brownian motion in terms of a standard Brownian motion. For an arbitrary choice $ε_k$ for the size of the jumps of the family of random walks, the rate of convergence of the approximation scheme is $O(ε_k^{p(1-2λ)+ 2(δ-1)})$ whenever $\max\{0,1-\frac{pH}{2}\}< δ< 1$, $λ\in \big(\frac{1-H}{2}, \frac…
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 show that geodesic random walks on a complete Finsler manifold of bounded geometry converge to a diffusion process which is, up to a drift, the Brownian motion corresponding to a Riemannian metric.
We consider a one-dimensional Brownian motion of fixed duration $T$. Using a path-integral technique, we compute exactly the probability distribution of the difference $τ=t_{\min}-t_{\max}$ between the time $t_{\min}$ of the global minimum and the time $t_{\max}$ of the global maximum. We extend this result to a Brownian bridge, i.e. a periodic Brownian motion of period $T$. In both cases, we compute analytically the first few moments of $τ$, as well as the covariance of $t_{\max}$ and $t_{\min}$, showing that these times are anti-correlated. We demonstrate that the distribution of $τ$ for Bro…
The probability distribution of the longest interval between two zeros of a simple random walk starting and ending at the origin, and of its continuum limit, the Brownian bridge, was analysed in the past by Rosén and Wendel, then extended by the latter to stable processes. We recover and extend these results using simple concepts of renewal theory, which allows to revisit past or recent works of the physics literature.
We consider the backbone of the infinite cluster generated by supercritical oriented site percolation in dimension 1 +1. A directed random walk on this backbone can be seen as an "ancestral line" of an individual sampled in the stationary discrete-time contact process. Such ancestral lineages were investigated in [BCDG13] where a central limit theorem for a single walker was proved. Here, we consider infinitely many coalescing walkers on the same backbone starting at each space-time point. We show that, after diffusive rescaling, the collection of paths converges in distribution to the Brownia…
The main purpose of this work is to define planar self-intersection local time by an alternative approach which is based on an almost sure pathwise approximation of planar Brownian motion by simple, symmetric random walks. As a result, Brownian self-intersection local time is obtained as an almost sure limit of local averages of simple random walk self-intersection local times. An important tool is a discrete version of the Tanaka--Rosen--Yor formula; the continuous version of the formula is obtained as an almost sure limit of the discrete version. The author hopes that this approach to self-i…
We propose a new algorithm to generate a fractional Brownian motion, with a given Hurst parameter, 1/2<H<1 using the correlated Bernoulli random variables with parameter p; having a certain density. This density is constructed using the link between the correlation of multivariate Gaussian random variables and the correlation of their dichotomized binary variables and the relation between the correlation coefficient and the persistence parameter. We prove that the normalized sum of trajectories of this proposed random walk yields a Gaussian process whose scaling limit is the desired fractional…
We study the persistence exponent for the first passage time of a random walk below the trajectory of another random walk. More precisely, let $\{B_n\}$ and $\{W_n\}$ be two centered, weakly dependent random walks. We establish that $\mathbb{P}(\forall_{n\leq N} B_n \geq W_n|W) = N^{-γ+ o(1)}$ for a non-random $γ\geq 1/2$. In the classical setting, $W_n \equiv 0$, it is well-known that $γ= 1/2$. We prove that for any non-trivial $W$ one has $γ>1/2$ and the exponent $γ$ depends only on $\text{Var}(B_1)/\text{Var}(W_1)$. Our result holds also in the continuous setting, when $B$ and $W$ are indep…
The geometry of coalescing random walks, the Brownian web distance and KPZ universality
Budapest University of Technology and Economics（布达佩斯科技经济大学）；HUN-REN–BME Stochastics Research Group（匈牙利研究网络-布达佩斯科技大学随机过程研究组）；University of Toronto（多伦多大学）
We use the Real Space Renormalization Group (RSRG) method to study extreme value statistics for a variety of Brownian motions, free or constrained such as the Brownian bridge, excursion, meander and reflected bridge, recovering some standard results, and extending others. We apply the same method to compute the distribution of extrema of Bessel processes. We briefly show how the continuous time random walk (CTRW) corresponds to a non standard fixed point of the RSRG transformation.
We introduce oscillatory analogues of fractional Brownian motion, sub-fractional Brownian motion and other related long range dependent Gaussian processes, we discuss their properties, and we show how they arise from particle systems with or without branching and with different types of initial conditions, where the individual particle motion is the so-called c-random walk on a hierarchical group. The oscillations are caused by the discrete and ultrametric structure of the hierarchical group, and they become slower as time tends to infinity and faster as time approaches zero. We also give othe…
We ask if it is possible to find some particular continuous paths of unit length in linear Brownian motion. Beginning with a discrete version of the problem, we derive the asymptotics of the expected waiting time for several interesting patterns. These suggest corresponding results on the existence/non-existence of continuous paths embedded in Brownian motion. With further effort we are able to prove some of these existence and non-existence results by various stochastic analysis arguments. A list of open problems is presented.
In this paper we introduce a new method for the simulation of the exit time and position of a $δ$-dimensional Brownian motion from a domain. The main interest of our method is that it avoids splitting time schemes as well as inversion of complicated series. The idea is to use the connexion between the $δ$-dimensional Bessel process and the $δ$-dimensional Brownian motion thanks to an explicit Bessel hitting time distribution associated with a particular curved boundary. This allows to build a fast and accurate numerical scheme for approximating the hitting time. Numerical comparisons with exis…
The Brownian Web (BW) is a family of coalescing Brownian motions starting from every point in space and time $\R\times\R$. It was first introduced by Arratia, and later analyzed in detail by Tóth and Werner. More recently, Fontes, Isopi, Newman and Ravishankar gave a characterization of the BW, and general convergence criteria allowing either crossing or noncrossing paths, which they verified for coalescing simple random walks. Later Ferrari, Fontes, and Wu verified these criteria for a two dimensional Poisson Tree. In both cases, the paths are noncrossing. In this thesis, we formulate new con…
In this paper we investigate the argmin process of Brownian motion $B$ defined by $α_t:=\sup\left\{s \in [0,1]: B_{t+s}=\min_{u \in [0,1]}B_{t+u} \right\}$ for $t \geq 0$. The argmin process $α$ is stationary,with invariant measure which is arcsine distributed. We prove that $(α_t; t \geq 0)$ is a Markov process with the Feller property, and provide its transition kernel $Q_t(x,\cdot)$ for $t>0$ and $x \in [0,1]$. Similar results for the argmin process of random walks and Lévy processes are derived. We also consider Brownian extrema of a given length. We prove that these extrema form a delayed…
In this paper we study a random walk on an affine building of type $\tilde{A}_r$, whose radial part, when suitably normalized, converges to the Brownian motion of the Weyl chamber. This gives a new discrete approximation of this process, alternative to the one of Biane \cite{Bia2}. This extends also the link at the probabilistic level between Riemannian symmetric spaces of the noncompact type and their discrete counterpart, which had been previously discovered by Bougerol and Jeulin in rank one \cite{BJ}. The main ingredients of the proof are a combinatorial formula on the building and the est…
The fractional Brownian motion is a generalization of ordinary Brownian motion, used particularly when long-range dependence is required. Its explicit introduction is due to B.B. Mandelbrot and J.W. van Ness (1968) as a self-similar Gaussian process $\WH (t)$ with stationary increments. Here self-similarity means that $(a^{-H}\WH(at): t \ge 0) \stackrel{d}{=} (\WH(t): t \ge 0)$, where $H\in (0, 1)$ is the Hurst parameter of fractional Brownian motion. F.B. Knight gave a construction of ordinary Brownian motion as a limit of simple random walks in 1961. Later his method was simplified by P. Rév…
The Brownian web is a random object that occurs as the scaling limit of an infinite system of coalescing random walks. Perturbing this system of random walks by, independently at each point in space-time, resampling the random walk increments, leads to some natural dynamics. In this paper we consider the corresponding dynamics for the Brownian web. In particular, pairs of coupled Brownian webs are studied, where the second web is obtained from the first by perturbing according to these dynamics. A stochastic flow of kernels, which we call the erosion flow, is obtained via a filtering construct…
Consider a random walker on the nonnegative lattice, moving in continuous time, whose positive transition intensity is proportional to the time the walker spends at the origin. In this way, the walker is a jump process with a stochastic and adapted jump intensity. We show that, upon Brownian scaling, the sequence of such processes converges to Brownian motion with inert drift (BMID). BMID was introduced by Frank Knight in 2001 and generalized by White in 2007. This confirms a conjecture of Burdzy and White in 2008 in the one-dimensional setting.
We consider the maximum process of a random walk with additive independent noise in form of $\max_{i=1,\dots,n}(S_i+Y_i)$. The random walk may have dependent increments, but its sample path is assumed to converge weakly to a fractional Brownian motion. When the largest noise has the same order as the maximal displacement of the random walk, we establish an invariance principle for the maximum process in the Skorohod topology. The limiting process is the maximum process of the fractional Brownian notion with shot noise generated by Poisson point processes.
We study a natural continuous time version of excited random walks, introduced by Norris, Rogers and Williams about twenty years ago. We obtain a necessary and sufficient condition for recurrence and for positive speed. This is analogous to results for excited (or cookie) random walks.
The Brownian excursion measure is a conformally invariant infinite measure on curves. It figured prominently in one of the first major applications of SLE, namely the explicit calculations of the planar Brownian intersection exponents from which the Hausdorff dimension of the frontier of the Brownian path could be computed (Lawler, Schramm, and Werner, 2001). In this paper we define the simple random walk excursion measure and show that for any bounded, simply connected Jordan domain D, the simple random walk excursion measure on D converges in the scaling limit to the Brownian excursion measu…
We used the random walk to model the problem of reserves. The classic case of a stochastic process is the example of random walks, which are used to study a set of phenomena and, particularly, as in this article, models of reserves evolution. Random walks also allow the construction of significant complex systems and are also used as an instrument of analysis, being used in the sense of giving a theoretical characteristic to other types of systems. Our goal is primarily to study reserves to see how to ensure that pension funds are sustainable. This classic approach to the study of pension fund…
