A class of stochastic processes, called "weak Dirichlet processes", is introduced and its properties are investigated in detail. This class is much larger than the class of Dirichlet processes. It is closed under C^1$-transformations and under absolutely continuous change of measure. If a weak Dirichlet process has finite energy, as defined by Graversen and Rao, its Doob-Meyer type decomposition is unique. The developed methods have been applied to a study of generalized martingale convolutions.
Diffusion processes associated with semi-Dirichlet forms are studied in the paper. The main results are Fukushima's decomposition for the diffusions and a transformation formula for the corresponding martingale part of the decomposition. The results are applied to some concrete examples.
We present a Fukushima type decomposition in the setting of general quasi-regular semi-Dirichlet forms. The decomposition is then employed to give a transformation formula for martingale additive functionals. Applications of the results to some concrete examples of semi-Dirichlet forms are given at the end of the paper. We discuss also the uniqueness question about Doob-Meyer decomposition on optional sets of interval type.
This paper is devoted to present a method of proving verification theorems for stochastic optimal control of finite dimensional diffusion processes without control in the diffusion term. The value function is assumed to be continuous in time and once differentiable in the space variable ($C^{0,1}$) instead of once differentiable in time and twice in space ($C^{1,2}$), like in the classical results. The results are obtained using a time dependent Fukushima - Dirichlet decomposition proved in a companion paper by the same authors using stochastic calculus via regularization. Applications, exampl…
We study ergodic decompositions of Dirichlet spaces under intertwining via unitary order isomorphisms. We show that the ergodic decomposition of a quasi-regular Dirichlet space is unique up to a unique isomorphism of the indexing space. Furthermore, every unitary order isomorphism intertwining two quasi-regular Dirichlet spaces is decomposable over their ergodic decompositions up to conjugation via an isomorphism of the corresponding indexing spaces.
We study superpositions and direct integrals of quadratic and Dirichlet forms. We show that each quasi-regular Dirichlet space over a probability space admits a unique representation as a direct integral of irreducible Dirichlet spaces, quasi-regular for the same underlying topology. The same holds for each quasi-regular strongly local Dirichlet space over a metrizable Luzin, Radon measure space, and admitting carré du champ operator. In this case, the representation is only projectively unique.
For given strongly local Dirichlet forms with possibly degenerate symmetric (sub)-elliptic matrix, we show the existence of weak solutions to the stochastic differential equations (associated with the Dirichlet forms) starting from all points in $\R^d$. More precisely, using heat kernel estimates, stochastic calculus, and Dirichlet form theory, we obtain the pointwise existence of weak solutions to the stochastic differential equations which have possibly unbounded and discontinuous drift. We also present some conditions that the weak solutions become pathwise unique strong solutions and provi…
This paper concerns a class of Banach valued processes which have finite quadratic variation. The notion introduced here generalizes the classical one, of Métivier and Pellaumail which is quite restrictive. We make use of the notion of $χ$-covariation which is a generalized notion of covariation for processes with values in two Banach spaces $B_{1}$ and $B_{2}$. $χ$ refers to a suitable subspace of the dual of the projective tensor product of $B_{1}$ and $B_{2}$. We investigate some $C^{1}$ type transformations for various classes of stochastic processes admitting a $χ$-quadratic variation and…
This paper considers a forward BSDE driven by a random measure, when the underlying forward process X is special semimartingale, or even more generally, a special weak Dirichlet process. Given a solution (Y, Z, U), generally Y appears to be of the type u(t, X\_t) where u is a deterministic function. In this paper we identify Z and U in terms of u applying stochastic calculus with respect to weak Dirichlet processes.
We extend to c{à}dl{à}g weak Dirichlet processes the C^{0,1}-functional It{ô}-Dupire's formula of Bouchard, Loeper and Tan (2021). In particular, we provide sufficient conditions under which a C^{0,1}-functional transformation of a special weak Dirichlet process remains a special weak Dirichlet process. As opposed to Bandini and Russo (2018) who considered the Markovian setting, our approach is not based on the approximation of the functional by smooth ones, which turns out not to be available in the pathdependent case. We simply use a small-jumps cutting argument.
On any denumerable product of probability spaces, we construct a Malliavin gradient and then a divergence and a number operator. This yields a Dirichlet structure which can be shown to approach the usual structures for Poisson and Brownian processes. We obtain versions of almost all the classical functional inequalities in discrete settings which show that the Efron-Stein inequality can be interpreted as a Poincar{é} inequality or that Hoeffding decomposition of U-statistics can be interpreted as a chaos decomposition. We obtain a version of the Lyapounov central limit theorem for independent …
In this paper we explain how the notion of ''weak Dirichlet process'' is the suitable generalization of the one of semimartingale with jumps. For such a process we provide a unique decomposition which is new also for semimartingales: in particular we introduce ''characteristics'' for weak Dirichlet processes. We also introduce a weak concept (in law) of finite quadratic variation. We investigate a set of new useful chain rules and we discuss a general framework of (possibly path-dependent with jumps) martingale problems with a set of examples of SDEs with jumps driven by a distributional drift…
Matrix Dirichlet processes, in reference to their reversible measure, appear in a natural way in many different models in probability. Applying the language of diffusion operators and the method of boundary equations, we describe Dirichlet processes on the simplex and provide two models of matrix Dirichlet processes, which can be realized by various projections, through the Brownian motion on the special unitary group, the polar decomposition of complex matrices and also through Wishart processes.
A stochastic optimal control problem driven by an abstract evolution equation in a separable Hilbert space is considered. Thanks to the identification of the mild solution of the state equation as $ν$-weak Dirichlet process, the value processes is proved to be a real weak Dirichlet process. The uniqueness of the corresponding decomposition is used to prove a verification theorem. Through that technique several of the required assumptions are milder than those employed in previous contributions about non-regular solutions of Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman equations.
In this paper we shall prove the weak convergence of the associated diffusion processes of regular subspaces with monotone characteristic sets for a fixed Dirichlet form. More precisely, given a fixed 1-dimensional diffusion process and a sequence of its regular subspaces, if the characteristic sets of regular subspaces are decreasing or increasing, then their associated diffusion processes are weakly convergent to another diffusion process. This is an extended result of [13].
The motivation of this paper is to prove verification theorems for stochastic optimal control of finite dimensional diffusion processes without control in the diffusion term, in the case that the value function is assumed to be continuous in time and once differentiable in the space variable ($C^{0,1}$) instead of once differentiable in time and twice in space ($C^{1,2}$), like in the classical results. For this purpose, the replacement tool of the Itô formula will be the Fukushima-Dirichlet decomposition for weak Dirichlet processes. Given a fixed filtration, a weak Dirichlet process is the s…
This paper develops systematically the stochastic calculus via regularization in the case of jump processes. In particular one continues the analysis of real-valued càdlàg weak Dirichlet processes with respect to a given filtration. Such a process is the sum of a local martingale and an adapted process $A$ such that $[N,A] = 0$, for any continuous local martingale $N$. Given a function $u:[0,T] \times \mathbb{R} \to \mathbb{R}$, which is of class $C^{0,1}$ (or sometimes less), we provide a chain rule type expansion for $u(t,X_t)$ which stands in applications for a chain Itô type rule.
The present paper continues the study of infinite dimensional calculus via regularization, started by C. Di Girolami and the second named author, introducing the notion of weak Dirichlet process in this context. Such a process X, taking values in a Banach space H, is the sum of a local martingale and a suitable orthogonal process. The concept of weak Dirichlet process fits the notion of convolution type processes, a class including mild solutions for stochastic evolution equations on infinite dimensional Hilbert spaces and in particular of several classes of stochastic partial differential equ…
The present paper continues the study of infinite dimensional calculus via regularization, started by C. Di Girolami and the second named author, introducing the notion of "weak Dirichlet process" in this context. Such a process $\X$, taking values in a Hilbert space $H$, is the sum of a local martingale and a suitable "orthogonal" process. The new concept is shown to be useful in several contexts and directions. On one side, the mentioned decomposition appears to be a substitute of an Itô type formula applied to $f(t, \X(t))$ where $f:[0,T] \times H \rightarrow \R$ is a $C^{0,1}$ function and…
In this paper we discuss existence and uniqueness for a one-dimensional time inhomogeneous stochastic differential equation directed by an $\mathbb{F}$-semimartingale $M$ and a finite cubic variation process $ξ$ which has the structure $Q+R$, where $Q$ is a finite quadratic variation process and $R$ is strongly predictable in some technical sense: that condition implies, in particular, that $R$ is weak Dirichlet, and it is fulfilled, for instance, when $R$ is independent of $M$. The method is based on a transformation which reduces the diffusion coefficient multiplying $ξ$ to 1. We use general…
We prove tightness of a family of path measures $ν_{\varepsilon}$ on tubes $L(\varepsilon)$ of small diameters around a closed and connected submanifold $L$ of another Riemannian manifold $M$. Together with a convergence result for Dirichlet semigroups on tubular neighbourhoods, that implies weak convergence of the measures as the tube radius $\varepsilon$ tends to zero to a measure supported by the path space of the submanifold. As a consequence, we obtain weak convergence of the measures obtained by conditioning Brownian motion to stay within the tubes $L(\varepsilon)$ up to a finite time $T…
We consider decompositions of processes of the form $Y=f(t,X_t)$ where $X$ is a semimartingale. The function $f$ is not required to be differentiable, so Itô's lemma does not apply. In the case where $f(t,x)$ is independent of $t$, it is shown that requiring $f$ to be locally Lipschitz continuous in $x$ is enough for an Itô-style decomposition to exist. In particular, $Y$ will be a Dirichlet process. We also look at the case where $f(t,x)$ can depend on $t$, possibly discontinuously. It is shown, under some additional mild constraints on $f$, that the same decomposition still holds. Both these…
The Gamma-Dirichlet structure corresponds to the decomposition of the gamma process into the independent product of a gamma random variable and a Dirichlet process. This structure allows us to study the properties of the Dirichlet process through the gamma process and vice versa. In this article, we begin with a brief review of existing results concerning the Gamma-Dirichlet structure. New results are obtained for the large deviations of the jump sizes of the gamma process and the quasi-invariance of the two-parameter Poisson-Dirichlet distribution. The laws of the gamma process and the Dirich…
In the context of a metric measure Dirichlet space satisfying volume doubling and Poincaré inequality, we prove the parabolic Harnack inequality for weak solutions of the heat equation associated with local nonsymmetric bilinear forms. In particular, we show that these weak solutions are locally bounded.
We study the time regularity of local weak solutions of the heat equation in the context of local regular symmetric Dirichlet spaces. Under two basic and rather minimal assumptions, namely, the existence of certain cut-off functions and a very weak $L^2$ Gaussian type upper-bound for the heat semigroup, we prove that the time derivatives of a local weak solution of the heat equation are themselves local weak solutions. This applies, for instance, to local weak solutions of parabolic equations with uniformly elliptic symmetric divergence form second order operators with measurable coefficients.…
Given a regular Dirichlet form $(\mathcal{E},\mathcal{F})$ on a fixed domain $E$ of $\mathbb{R}^d$, we first indicate that the basic assumption $C_c^\infty(E)\subset \mathcal{F}$ is equivalent to the fact that each coordinate function $f^i(x)=x_i$ locally belongs to $\mathcal{F}$ for $1\leq i\leq d$. Our research starts from these two different viewpoints. On one hand, we shall explore when $C_c^\infty(E)$ is a special standard core of $\mathcal{F}$ and give some useful characterizations. On the other hand, we shall describe the Fukushima's decompositions of $(\mathcal{E},\mathcal{F})$ with re…
After recalling basic features of the theory of symmetric quasi regular Dirichlet forms we show how by applying it to the stochastic quantization equation, with Gaussian space-time noise, one obtains weak solutions in a large invariant set. Subsequently, we discuss non symmetric quasi regular Dirichlet forms and show in particular by two simple examples in infinite dimensions that infinitesimal invariance, does not imply global invariance. We also present a simple example of non-Markov uniqueness in infinite dimensions.
We estimate the heat kernel of the smooth open set for the isotropic unimodal pure-jump Lévy process with infinite Lévy measure and weakly scaling Lévy-Kchintchine exponent.
This paper explores large sample properties of the two-parameter $(α,θ)$ Poisson--Dirichlet Process in two contexts. In a Bayesian context of estimating an unknown probability measure, viewing this process as a natural extension of the Dirichlet process, we explore the consistency and weak convergence of the the two-parameter Poisson--Dirichlet posterior process. We also establish the weak convergence of properly centered two-parameter Poisson--Dirichlet processes for large $θ+nα.$ This latter result complements large $θ$ results for the Dirichlet process and Poisson--Dirichlet sequences, and …
This paper aims at proving the local boundedness and continuity of solutions of the heat equation in the context of Dirichlet spaces under some rather weak additional assumptions. We consider symmetric local regular Dirichlet forms which satisfy mild assumptions concerning (a) the existence of cut-off functions, (b) a local ultracontractivity hypothesis, and (c) a weak off-diagonal upper bound. In this setting, local weak solutions of the heat equation, and their time derivatives, are shown to be locally bounded; they are further locally continuous, if the semigroup admits a locally continuous…
Perturbations of super Poincaré and weak Poincaré inequalities for Lévy type Dirichlet forms are studied. When the range of jumps is finite our results are natural extensions to the corresponding ones derived earlier for diffusion processes; and we show that the study for the situation with infinite range of jumps is essentially different. Some examples are presented to illustrate the optimality of our results.
We develop a general framework on Dirichlet spaces to prove a weak form of the Bakry-Émery estimate and study its consequences. This estimate may be satisfied in situations, like metric graphs, where generalized notions of Ricci curvature lower bounds are not available.
Let $Ω\subset{\mathbb R}^n$ be bounded with a smooth boundary $Γ$ and let $S$ be the symmetric operator in $L^2(Ω)$ given by the minimal realization of a second order elliptic differential operator. We give a complete classification of the Markovian self-adjoint extensions of $S$ by providing an explicit one-to-one correspondence between such extensions and the class of Dirichlet forms in $L^2(Γ)$ which are additively decomposable by the bilinear form of the Dirichlet-to-Neumann operator plus a Markovian form. By such a result two further equivalent classifications are provided: the first one …
