In this paper we consider two-point unilateral Markov fields on a two-dimensional lattice as considered by Pickard, Galbraith and Walley. We show that, under various ergodicity conditions, they can be perfectly simulated in the stationary state on any finite window. The techniques which are used connect perfect simulation with oriented percolation through suitable coupling constructions.
Here several perfect simulation algorithms are brought under a single framework, and shown to derive from the same probabilistic result, called here the Fundamental Theorem of Perfect Simulation (FTPS). An exact simulation algorithm has output according to an input distribution $π$. Perfect simulations are a subclass of exact simulations where recursion is used either explicitly or implicitly. The FTPS gives two simple criteria that, when satisfied, give a correct perfect simulation algorithm. First the algorithm must terminate in finite time with probability 1. Second, the algorithm must be l…
Perfect simulation of an one-dimensional loss network on $\R$ with length distribution $π$ and cable capacity $C$ is performed using the clan of ancestors method. Domination of the clan of ancestors by a branching process with longer memory improves the sufficient conditions for the perfect scheme to be applicable.
In this paper a general approach for the perfect simulation of a stationary process with at most countable state space is outlined. The process is specified through a kernel, prescribing the probability of each state conditional to the whole past history. We follow the seminal paper of Comets, Fernandez and Ferrari, where sufficient conditions for the construction of a certain perfect simulation algorithm have been given. We generalize this approach by defining backward coalescence times for these kind of processes; this allows us to construct perfect simulation algorithms under weaker conditi…
We establish sufficient conditions for perfect simulation of chains of infinite order on a countable alphabet. The new assumption, localized continuity, is formalized with the help of the notion of context trees, and includes the traditional continuous case, probabilistic context trees and discontinuous kernels. Since our assumptions are more refined than uniform continuity, our algorithms perfectly simulate continuous chains faster than the existing algorithms of the literature. We provide several illustrative examples.
This paper generalizes the work of Kendall [Electron. Comm. Probab. 9 (2004) 140--151], which showed that perfect simulation, in the form of dominated coupling from the past, is always possible (although not necessarily practical) for geometrically ergodic Markov chains. Here, we consider the more general situation of positive recurrent chains and explore when it is possible to produce such a simulation algorithm for these chains. We introduce a class of chains which we name tame, for which we show that perfect simulation is possible.
We consider a particle system on $Z^d$ with finite state space and interactions of infinite range. Assuming that the rate of change is continuous and decays sufficiently fast, we introduce a perfect simulation algorithm for the stationary process. The algorithm follows from a representation of the multicolor system as a finitary coding from a sequence of independent uniform random variables. This implies that the process is exponentially ergodic. The basic tool we use is a representation of the infinite range change rates as a mixture of finite range change rates.
A number of perfect simulation algorithms for multi-server First Come First Served queues have recently been developed. Those of Connor and Kendall (2015) and Blanchet, Pei, and Sigman (2015) use dominated Coupling from the Past (domCFTP) to sample from the equilibrium distribution of the Kiefer-Wolfowitz workload vector for stable M/G/c and GI/GI/c queues respectively, using Random Assignment queues as dominating processes. In this note we answer a question posed by Connor and Kendall (2015), by demonstrating how these algorithms may be modified in order to carry out domCFTP simultaneously fo…
We consider a nonlinear multivariate Hawkes process having a variable length memory which allows to describe the activity of a neuronal network by its membrane potential. We propose a graphical construction of the process and we construct, by means of a perfect simulation algorithm, a stationary version of the process. By making the hypothesis that the spiking rate $β_i$ of the neuron $i \in I $ is bounded, we construct an algorithm based on a priori realizations of the Poisson process $(M^i, i \in I)$. We show that there exists a critical value $δ_c$ such that if $\underlineδ > δ_c$ (where $\…
We present a new perfect simulation algorithm for stationary chains having unbounded variable length memory. This is the class of infnite memory chains for which the family of transition probabilities is represented by a probabilistic context tree. We do not assume any continuity condition: our condition is expressed in terms of the structure of the context tree. More precisely, the length of the contexts is a deterministic function of the distance to the last occurrence of some determined string of symbols. It turns out that the resulting class of chains can be seen as a natural extension of …
We explicitly construct a coupling attaining Ornstein's $\bar{d}$-distance between ordered pairs of binary chains of infinite order. Our main tool is a representation of the transition probabilities of the coupled bivariate chain of infinite order as a countable mixture of Markov transition probabilities of increasing order. Under suitable conditions on the loss of memory of the chains, this representation implies that the coupled chain can be represented as a concatenation of iid sequence of bivariate finite random strings of symbols. The perfect simulation algorithm is based on the fact that…
This paper is composed of two main results concerning chains of infinite order which are not necessarily continuous. The first one is a decomposition of the transition probability kernel as a countable mixture of unbounded probabilistic context trees. This decomposition is used to design a simulation algorithm which works as a combination of the algorithms given by Comets et al. (2002) and Gallo (2009). The second main result gives sufficient conditions on the kernel for this algorithm to stop after an almost surely finite number of steps. Direct consequences of this last result are existence …
Fork-join network is a class of queueing networks with applications in manufactory, healthcare and computation systems. In this paper, we develop a simulation algorithm that (1) generates i.i.d. samples of the job sojourn time, jointly with the number of waiting tasks, exactly following the steady-state distribution, and (2) unbiased estimators of the derivatives of the job sojourn time with respect to the service rates of the servers in the network. The algorithm is designed based on the Coupling from the Past (CFTP) and Infinitesimal Perturbation Analysis (IPA) techniques. Two numerical exam…
Coupling from the past (CFTP) methods have been used to generate perfect samples from finite Gibbs hard-sphere models, an important class of spatial point processes, which is a set of spheres with the centers on a bounded region that are distributed as a homogeneous Poisson point process (PPP) conditioned that spheres do not overlap with each other. We propose an alternative importance sampling based rejection methodology for the perfect sampling of these models. We analyze the asymptotic expected running time complexity of the proposed method when the intensity of the reference PPP increases …
We study a purely inhibitory neural network model where neurons are represented by their state of inhibition. The study we present here is partially based on the work of Cottrell \cite{Cot} and Fricker et al. \cite{FRST}. The spiking rate of a neuron depends only on its state of inhibition. When a neuron spikes, its state is replaced by a random new state, independently of anything else and the inhibition state of the other neurons increase by a positive value. Using the Perron-Frobenius theorem, we show the existence of a Lyapunov function for the process. Furthermore, we prove a local Doebli…
We describe a new algorithm for the perfect simulation of variable length Markov chains and random systems with perfect connections. This algorithm, which generalizes Propp and Wilson's simulation scheme, is based on the idea of coupling into and from the past. It improves on existing algorithms by relaxing the conditions on the kernel and by accelerating convergence, even in the simple case of finite order Markov chains. Although chains of variable or infinite order have been widely investigated for decades, their use in applied probability, from information theory to bio-informatics and ling…
The weak limit of the normalized number of comparisons needed by the Quicksort algorithm to sort n randomly permuted items is known to be determined implicitly by a distributional fixed-point equation. We give an algorithm for perfect random variate generation from this distribution.
In this paper we address the questions of perfectly sampling a Gibbs measure with infinite range interactions and of perfectly sampling the measure together with its finite range approximations. We solve these questions by introducing a perfect simulation algorithm for the measure and for the coupled measures. The algorithm works for general Gibbsian interaction under requirements on the tails of the interaction. As a consequence we obtain an upper bound for the error we make when sampling from a finite range approximation instead of the true infinite range measure.
This paper describes an algorithm of interest. This is a preliminary version and we intend on writing a better descripition of it and getting bounds for its complexity.
We use coupling into and from the past to sample perfectly in a simple and provably fast fashion from the Vervaat family of perpetuities. The family includes the Dickman distribution, which arises both in number theory and in the analysis of the Quickselect algorithm, which was the motivation for our work.
In this article we create a new algorithm for the perfect simulation of the infinite Potts model at a sufficiently small or at a sufficiently high temperature, in particular under the transition phase temperature. We study the model for free boundary conditions and we give some consequences for the constant boundary conditions.
Determinantal point processes (DPP) serve as a practicable modeling for many applications of repulsive point processes. A known approach for simulation was proposed in \cite{Hough(2006)}, which generate the desired distribution point wise through rejection sampling. Unfortunately, the size of rejection could be very large. In this paper, we investigate the application of perfect simulation via coupling from the past (CFTP) on DPP. We give a general framework for perfect simulation on DPP model. It is shown that the limiting sequence of the time-to-coalescence of the coupling is bounded by $K|Λ…
This paper deals with the problem of perfect sampling from a Gibbs measure with infinite range interactions. We present some sufficient conditions for the extinction of processes which are like supermartingales when large values are taken. This result has deep consequences on perfect simulation, showing that local modifications on the interactions of a model do not affect simulability. We also pose the question to optimize over a class of sequences of sets that influence the sufficient condition for the perfect simulation of the Gibbs measure. We completely solve this question both for the lon…
In this paper we consider the problem of determining the law of binary stochastic processes from transition kernels depending on the whole past. These kernels are linear in the past values of the process. They are allowed to assume values close to both 0 and 1, preventing the application of usual results on uniqueness. More precisely we give sufficient conditions for uniqueness and non-uniqueness. In the former case a perfect simulation algorithm is also given.
We prove that uniqueness of the stationary chain, or equivalently, of the $g$-measure, compatible with an attractive regular probability kernel is equivalent to either one of the following two assertions for this chain: (1) it is a finitary coding of an i.i.d. process with countable alphabet, (2) the concentration of measure holds at exponential rate. We show in particular that if a stationary chain is uniquely defined by a kernel that is continuous and attractive, then this chain can be sampled using a coupling-from-the-past algorithm. For the original Bramson-Kalikow model we further prove t…
We present a perfect simulation of the hard disks model via the partial rejection sampling method. Provided the density of disks is not too high, the method produces exact samples in $O(\log n)$ rounds, and total time $O(n)$, where $n$ is the expected number of disks. The method extends easily to the hard spheres model in $d>2$ dimensions. In order to apply the partial rejection method to this continuous setting, we provide an alternative perspective of its correctness and run-time analysis that is valid for general state spaces.
This work presents a faster method of simulating exactly from a distribution known as a Vervaat perpetuity. A parameter of the Vervaat perpetuity is $β\in (0,\infty)$. An earlier method for simulating from this distributon ran in time $O((2.23β)^β).$ This earlier method utilized dominated coupling from the past that bounded a stochastic process for perpetuities from above. By extending to non-Markovian update functions, it is possible to create a new method that bounds the perpetuities from both above and below. This new approach is shown to run in $O(β\ln(β))$ time.
This note extends the work of Foss and Tweedie (1997), who showed that availability of the classic Coupling from The Past algorithm of Propp and Wilson (1996) is essentially equivalent to uniform ergodicity for a Markov chain (see also HobertRobert, 2004). In this note we show that all geometrically ergodic chains possess dominated Coupling from The Past algorithms (not necessarily practical!) which are rather closely connected to Foster-Lyapunov criteria.
We present a perfect simulation algorithm for stationary processes indexed by Z, with summable memory decay. Depending on the decay, we construct the process on finite or semi-infinite intervals, explicitly from an i.i.d. uniform sequence. Even though the process has infinite memory, its value at time 0 depends only on a finite, but random, number of these uniform variables. The algorithm is based on a recent regenerative construction of these measures by Ferrari, Maass, Mart{\'ı}nez and Ney. As applications, we discuss the perfect simulation of binary autoregressions and Markov chains on the …
In this paper we describe a perfect simulation algorithm for the stable $M/G/c$ queue. Sigman (2011: Exact Simulation of the Stationary Distribution of the FIFO M/G/c Queue. Journal of Applied Probability, 48A, 209--213) showed how to build a dominated CFTP algorithm for perfect simulation of the super-stable $M/G/c$ queue operating under First Come First Served discipline, with dominating process provided by the corresponding $M/G/1$ queue (using Wolff's sample path monotonicity, which applies when service durations are coupled in order of initiation of service), and exploiting the fact that …
Consider a randomized algorithm that draws samples exactly from a distribution using recursion. Such an algorithm is called a perfect simulation, and here a variety of methods for building this type of algorithm are shown to derive from the same result: the Fundamental Theorem of Perfect Simulation (FTPS). The FTPS gives two necessary and sufficient conditions for the output of a recursive probabilistic algorithm to come exactly from the desired distribution. First, the algorithm must terminate with probability 1. Second, the algorithm must be locally correct, which means that if the recursive…
Repulsive point processes arise in models where competition forces entities to be more spread apart than if placed independently. Simulation of these types of processes can be accomplished using dominated coupling from the past with a running time that varies as the intensity of the number of points. These algorithms usually exhibit what is called an artificial phase transition, where below a critical intensity the algorithm runs in finite expected time, but above the critical intensity the expected number of steps is infinite. Here the artificial phase transition is examined. In particular, a…
We present a perfect simulation algorithm for measures that are absolutely continuous with respect to some Poisson process and can be obtained as invariant measures of birth-and-death processes. Examples include area- and perimeter-interacting point processes (with stochastic grains), invariant measures of loss networks, and the Ising contour and random cluster models. The algorithm does not involve couplings of the process with different initial conditions and it is not tied up to monotonicity requirements. Furthermore, it directly provides perfect samples of finite windows of the infinite-vo…