The aim of this article is to provide a scheme for simulating diffusion processes evolving in one-dimensional discontinuous media. This scheme does not rely on smoothing the coefficients that appear in the infinitesimal generator of the diffusion processes, but uses instead an exact description of the behavior of their trajectories when they reach the points of discontinuity. This description is supplied with the local comparison of the trajectories of the diffusion processes with those of a skew Brownian motion.
In this paper we study a stochastic differential equation driven by a fractional Brownian motion with a discontinuous coefficient. We also give an approximation to the solution of the equation. This is a first step to define a fractional version of the skew Brownian motion.
We study one-dimensional stochastic differential equations of form $dX_t = σ(X_t)dY_t$, where $Y$ is a suitable Hölder continuous driver such as the fractional Brownian motion $B^H$ with $H>\frac12$. The innovative aspect of the present paper lies in the assumptions on diffusion coefficients $σ$ for which we assume very mild conditions. In particular, we allow $σ$ to have discontinuities, and as such our results can be applied to study equations with discontinuous diffusions.
Convergence of stochastic processes with jumps to diffusion processes is investigated in the case when the limit process has discontinuous coefficients. An example is given in which the diffusion approximation of a queueing model yields a diffusion process with discontinuous diffusion and drift coefficients.
A Monte Carlo method for simulating a multi-dimensional diffusion process conditioned on hitting a fixed point at a fixed future time is developed. Proposals for such diffusion bridges are obtained by superimposing an additional guiding term to the drift of the process under consideration. The guiding term is derived via approximation of the target process by a simpler diffusion processes with known transition densities. Acceptance of a proposal can be determined by computing the likelihood ratio between the proposal and the target bridge, which is derived in closed form. We show under general…
The paper considers parabolic equations in non-divergent form with discontinuous coefficients at higher derivatives. Their investigation is most complicated because, in general, in the case of discontinuous coefficients, the uniqueness of a solution for nonlinear parabolic or elliptic equations can fail, and there is no a priory estimate for partial derivatives of a solution. In this paper, existence and regularity results are obtained under some Cordes type restrictions on the coefficients. The results are applied to diffusion processes.
The classical result by Itô on the existence of strong solutions of stochastic differential equations (SDEs) with Lipschitz coefficients can be extended to the case where the drift is only measurable and bounded. These generalizations are based on techniques presented by Zvonkin and Veretennikov, which rely on the uniform ellipticity of the diffusion coefficient. In this paper we study the case of degenerate ellipticity and give sufficient conditions for the existence of a solution. The conditions on the diffusion coefficient are more general than previous results and we gain fundamental insig…
In this paper we study the strong convergence for the Euler-Maruyama approximation of a class of stochastic differential equations whose both drift and diffusion coefficients are possibly discontinuous.
In this paper, we introduce a modification of the free boundary problem related to optimal stopping problems for diffusion processes. This modification allows the application of this PDE method in cases where the usual regularity assumptions on the coefficients and on the gain function are not satisfied. We apply this method to the optimal stopping of integral functionals with exponential discount of the form $E_x\int_0^τe^{-λs}f(X_s) ds$, $λ\ge0$ for one-dimensional diffusions $X$. We prove a general verification theorem which justifies the modified version of the free boundary problem. In th…
It is well known that a regular diffusion on an interval $I$ without killing inside is uniquely determined by a canonical scale function $s$ and a canonical speed measure $m$. Note that $s$ is a strictly increasing and continuous function and $m$ is a fully supported Radon measure on $I$. In this paper we will associate a general triple $(I,s,m)$, where $s$ is only assumed to be increasing and $m$ is not necessarily fully supported, to certain Markov processes by way of Dirichlet forms. A straightforward generalization of Dirichlet form associated to regular diffusion will be first put forward…
We study a second-order parabolic equation with divergence form elliptic operator, having piecewise constant diffusion coefficients with two points of discontinuity. Such partial differential equations appear in the modelization of diffusion phenomena in medium consisting of three kind of materials. Using probabilistic methods, we present an explicit expression of the fundamental solution under certain conditions. We also derive small-time asymptotic expansion of the PDE's solutions in the general case. The obtained results are directly usable in applications.
In a companion paper, the authors have characterized all deterministic semigroups, and all Markov semigroups, whose trajectories are Carathe'odory solutions to a given ODE x'=f(x), with f possibly discontinuous. The present paper establishes two approximation results. Namely, every deterministic semigroup can be obtained as the pointwise limit of the flows generated by a sequence of ODEs $x'=f_n(x) with smooth right hand sides. Moreover, every Markov semigroup can be obtained as limit of a sequence of diffusion processes with smooth drifts and with diffusion coefficients approaching zero.
In this paper we study jump-diffusion stochastic differential equations (SDEs) with a discontinuous drift coefficient and a possibly degenerate diffusion coefficient. Such SDEs appear in applications such as optimal control problems in energy markets. We prove existence and uniqueness of strong solutions. In addition we study the strong convergence order of the Euler-Maruyama scheme and recover the optimal rate $1/2$.
We consider a $d$-dimensional SDE with an identity diffusion matrix and a drift vector being a vector function of bounded variation. We give a representation for the derivative of the solution with respect to the initial data.
We consider a one-dimensional stochastic differential equations (SDE) with irregular coefficients. The purpose of this paper is to estimate the $L^p(Ω)$-difference of SDEs using the norm of the difference of coefficients, where the discontinuous drift coefficient satisfies a one-sided Lipschitz condition and the diffusion coefficient is bounded, uniformly elliptic and Hölder continuous. As an application, we consider the stability problem.
Subsurface flows are commonly modeled by advection-diffusion equations. Insufficient measurements or uncertain material procurement may be accounted for by random coefficients. To represent, for example, transitions in heterogeneous media, the parameters of the equation are spatially discontinuous. Specifically, a scenario with coupled advection- and diffusion coefficients that are modeled as sums of continuous random fields and discontinuous jump components are considered. For the numerical approximation of the solution, an adaptive, pathwise discretization scheme based on a Finite Element ap…
It is well known that a regular diffusion on an interval $I$ without killing inside is uniquely determined by a canonical scale function $s$ and a canonical speed measure $m$. Note that $s$ is a strictly increasing and continuous function and $m$ is a fully supported Radon measure on $I$. In this paper we will associate a general triple $(I,s,m)$, where $s$ is only assumed to be increasing and $m$ is not necessarily fully supported, to certain Markov processes by way of Dirichlet forms. Using two transformations, called scale completion and darning respectively, to rebuild the topology of $I$,…
The Richards' equation is a model for flow of water in unsaturated soils. The coefficients of this (nonlinear) partial differential equation describe the permeability of the medium. Insufficient or uncertain measurements are commonly modeled by random coefficients. For flows in heterogeneous\textbackslash fractured\textbackslash porous media, the coefficients are modeled as discontinuous random fields, where the interfaces along the stochastic discontinuities represent transitions in the media. More precisely, the random coefficient is given by the sum of a (continuous) Gaussian random field a…
The Wright--Fisher diffusion is important in population genetics in modelling the evolution of allele frequencies over time subject to the influence of biological phenomena such as selection, mutation, and genetic drift. Simulating paths of the process is challenging due to the form of the transition density. We present EWF, a robust and efficient sampler which returns exact draws for the diffusion and diffusion bridge processes, accounting for general models of selection including those with frequency-dependence. Given a configuration of selection, mutation, and endpoints, EWF returns draws a…
For covering spaces and properly discontinuous actions with compatible diffusion operators, we discuss Lyons-Sullivan discretizations of the associated diffusions and harmonic functions of bounded growth.
We consider time-changed diffusions driven by generators with discontinuous coefficients. The PDE's connections are investigated and in particular some results on the asymptotic analysis according to the behaviour of the coefficients are presented.
