This paper surveys the main results obtained during the period 1992-1999 on three aspects mentioned at the title. The first result is a new and general variational formula for the lower bound of spectral gap (i.e., the first non-trivial eigenvalue) of elliptic operators in Euclidean space, Laplacian on Riemannian manifolds or Markov chains (§1). Here, a probabilistic method-coupling method is adopted. The new formula is a dual of the classical variational formula. The last formula is actually equivalent to Poincaré inequality. To which, there are closely related logarithmic Sobolev inequality, Nash inequality, Liggett inequality and so on. These inequalities are treated in a unified way by using Cheeger's method which comes from Riemannian geometry. This consists of §2. The results on these two aspects are mainly completed by the author joint with F. Y. Wang. Furthermore, a diagram of the inequalities and the traditional three types of ergodicity is presented (§3). The diagram extends the ergodic theory of Markov processes. The details of the methods used in the paper will be explained in a subsequent paper under the same title.
We prove that an irreducible aperiodic Markov chain is geometrically ergodic if and only if any separately bounded functional of the stationary chain satisfies an appropriate subgaussian deviation inequality from its mean.
We consider Markov chain with spectral gap in $L^2$ space. Assume that $f$ is a bounded function. Then the probabilities of large deviations of average along trajectory satisfy Hoeffding's-type inequalities. These bounds depend only on the stationary mean, spectral gap and the end-points of support of $f$.
This paper consists of four parts. In the first part, we explain what eigenvalues we are interested in and show the difficulties of the study on the first (non-trivial) eigenvalue through examples. In the second part, we present some (dual) variational formulas and explicit bounds for the first eigenvalue of Laplacian on Riemannian manifolds or Jacobi matrices (Markov chains). Here, a probabilistic approach--the coupling methods is adopted. In the third part, we introduce recent lower bounds of several basic inequalities; these are based on a generalization of Cheeger's approach which comes fr…
There is a mathematical error in the first version of this paper. A new corrected version will be posted when the error is fixed, possibly with a modified title.
We study the relationship between two classical approaches for quantitative ergodic properties : the first one based on Lyapunov type controls and popularized by Meyn and Tweedie, the second one based on functional inequalities (of Poincaré type). We show that they can be linked through new inequalities (Lyapunov-Poincaré inequalities). Explicit examples for diffusion processes are studied, improving some results in the literature. The example of the kinetic Fokker-Planck equation recently studied by Hérau-Nier, Helffer-Nier and Villani is in particular discussed in the final section.
We analyze the asymptotic behavior for a system of fully nonlinear parabolic and elliptic quasi variational inequalities. These equations are related to robust switching control problems introduced in [3]. We prove that, as time horizon goes to infinity (resp. discount factor goes to zero) the long run average solution to the parabolic system (resp. the limiting discounted solution to the elliptic system) is characterized by a solution of a nonlinear system of ergodic variational inequalities. Our results hold under a dissipativity condition and without any non degeneracy assumption on the dif…
Deviation of ergodic sums is studied for substitution dynamical systems with a matrix that admits eigenvalues of modulus 1. We consider the corresponding eigenfunctions, and in Theorem 1.1 we prove that the limit inferior of the ergodic sums is bounded for every point in the phase space. In Theorem 1.2, we prove existence of limit distributions along certain exponential subsequences of times for substitutions of constant length. Under additional assumptions, we prove that ergodic integrals satisfy the Central Limit Theorem (Theorem 1.3, Theorem 1.9).
In an earlier work made by the first author with J. Turi (Degenerate Dirichlet Problems Related to the Invariant Measure of Elasto-Plastic Oscillators, AMO, 2008), the solution of a stochastic variational inequality modeling an elasto-perfectly-plastic oscillator has been studied. The existence and uniqueness of an invariant measure have been proven. Nonlocal problems have been introduced in this context. In this work, we present a new characterization of the invariant measure. The key finding is the connection between nonlocal PDEs and local PDEs which can be interpreted with short cycles of …
We study the mean field Schrödinger problem (MFSP), that is the problem of finding the most likely evolution of a cloud of interacting Brownian particles conditionally on the observation of their initial and final configuration. Its rigorous formulation is in terms of an optimization problem with marginal constraints whose objective function is the large deviation rate function associated with a system of weakly dependent Brownian particles. We undertake a fine study of the dynamics of its solutions, including quantitative energy dissipation estimates yielding the exponential convergence to eq…
This short survey is aimed at sketching the ergodic-theoretic aspects of the author's recent studies on Weyl's eigenvalue asymptotics for a \emph{"geometrically canonical" Laplacian} defined by the author on some self-conformal circle packing fractals including the classical \emph{Apollonian gasket}. The main result being surveyed is obtained by applying Kesten's renewal theorem [\emph{Ann.\ Probab.}\ \textbf{2} (1974), 355--386, Theorem 2] for functionals of Markov chains on general state spaces and provides an alternative probabilistic proof of the result by Oh and Shah [\emph{Invent.\ Math.…
We prove a lower bound for the $k$-th Steklov eigenvalues in terms of an isoperimetric constant called the $k$-th Cheeger-Steklov constant in three different situations: finite spaces, measurable spaces, and Riemannian manifolds. These lower bounds can be considered as higher order Cheeger type inequalities for the Steklov eigenvalues. In particular it extends the Cheeger type inequality for the first nonzero Steklov eigenvalue previously studied by Escobar in 1997 and by Jammes in 2015 to higher order Steklov eigenvalues. The technique we develop to get this lower bound is based on considerin…
We prove universal inequalities for Laplacian eigenvalues with Dirichlet boundary conditions on subsets of certain discrete groups. The study of universal inequalities on Riemannian manifolds was initiated by Weyl, Polya, Yau, and others. Here we focus on a version by Cheng and Yang. Specifically, we prove Yang-type universal inequalities for Cayley graphs of finitely generated amenable groups, as well as for the d-regular tree (simple random walk on the free group).
In previous work by Avena and den Hollander, a model of a one-dimensional random walk in a dynamic random environment was proposed where the random environment is resampled from a given law along a growing sequence of deterministic times. In the regime where the increments of the resampling times diverge, which is referred to as the cooling regime, a weak law of large numbers and certain fluctuation properties were derived under the annealed measure. In the present paper we show that a strong law of large numbers and a quenched large deviation principle hold as well. In the cooling regime, the…
Linear statistics of eigenvalues in many familiar classes of random matrices are known to obey gaussian central limit theorems. The proofs of such results are usually rather difficult, involving hard computations specific to the model in question. In this article we attempt to formulate a unified technique for deriving such results via relatively soft arguments. In the process, we introduce a notion of `second order Poincaré inequalities': just as ordinary Poincaré inequalities give variance bounds, second order Poincaré inequalities give central limit theorems. The proof of the main result em…
In this article, three models are considered, they are the infinitely-many-neutral-alleles model \cite{MR615945}, infinite dimensional diffusion associated with two-parameter Poisson-Dirichlet distribution \cite{MR2596654} and the infinitely-many-alleles model with symmetric dominance \cite{MR1626158}. The new representations of the transition transition densities are obtained for the first two models. Lastly, the ergodic inequalities of these three models are provided.
We derive uniform concentration inequalities for continuous-time analogues of empirical processes and related stochastic integrals of scalar ergodic diffusion processes. Thereby, we lay the foundation typically required for the study of sup-norm properties of estimation procedures for a large class of diffusion processes. In the classical i.i.d. context, a key device for the statistical sup-norm analysis is provided by Talagrand-type concentration inequalities. Aiming for a parallel substitute in the diffusion framework, we present a systematic, self-contained approach to such uniform concentr…
First, under a geometric ergodicity assumption, we provide some limit theorems and some probability inequalities for the bifurcating Markov chains (BMC). The BMC model was introduced by Guyon to detect cellular aging from cell lineage, and our aim is thus to complete his asymptotic results. The deviation inequalities are then applied to derive first result on the moderate deviation principle (MDP) for a functional of the BMC with a restricted range of speed, but with a function which can be unbounded. Next, under a uniform geometric ergodicity assumption, we provide deviation inequalities for …
Motivated by problems arising in random sampling of trigonometric polynomials, we derive exponential inequalities for the operator norm of the difference between the sample second moment matrix $n^{-1}U^*U$ and its expectation where $U$ is a complex random $n\times D$ matrix with independent rows. These results immediately imply deviation inequalities for the largest (smallest) eigenvalues of the sample second moment matrix, which in turn lead to results on the condition number of the sample second moment matrix. We also show that trigonometric polynomials in several variables can be learned f…
We consider long term average or `ergodic' optimal control poblems with a special structure: Control is exerted in all directions and the control costs are proportional to the square of the norm of the control field with respect to the metric induced by the noise. The long term stochastic dynamics on the manifold will be completely characterized by the long term density $ρ$ and the long term current density $J$. As such, control problems may be reformulated as variational problems over $ρ$ and $J$. We discuss several optimization problems: the problem in which both $ρ$ and $J$ are varied freel…
