For a given one-dimensional random walk $\{S_n\}$ with a subexponential step-size distribution, we present a unifying theory to study the sequences $\{x_n\}$ for which $\mathsf{P}\{S_n>x\}\sim n\mathsf{P}\{S_1>x\}$ as $n\to\infty$ uniformly for $x\ge x_n$. We also investigate the stronger "local" analogue, $\mathsf{P}\{S_n\in(x,x+T]\}\sim n\mathsf{P}\{S_1\in(x,x+T]\}$. Our theory is self-contained and fits well within classical results on domains of (partial) attraction and local limit theory. When specialized to the most important subclasses of subexponential distributions that have been studied in the literature, we reproduce known theorems and we supplement them with new results.
We consider the sample average of a centered random walk in $\mathbb{R}^d$ with regularly varying step size distribution. For the first exit time from a compact convex set $A$ not containing the origin, we show that its tail is of lognormal type. Moreover, we show that the typical way for a large exit time to occur is by having a number of jumps growing logarithmically in the scaling parameter.
Beck et al. (2013) introduced a new distribution class J which contains many heavy-tailed and light-tailed distributions obeying the principle of a single big jump. Using a simple transformation which maps heavy-tailed distributions to light-tailed ones, we find some light-tailed distributions, which belong to the class J but do not belong to the convolution equivalent distribution class and which are not even weakly tail equivalent to any convolution equivalent distribution. This fact helps to understand the structure of the light-tailed distributions in the class J and leads to a negative an…
We consider a modulated process S which, conditional on a background process X, has independent increments. Assuming that S drifts to -infinity and that its increments (jumps) are heavy-tailed (in a sense made precise in the paper), we exhibit natural conditions under which the asymptotics of the tail distribution of the overall maximum of S can be computed. We present results in discrete and in continuous time. In particular, in the absence of modulation, the process S in continuous time reduces to a Levy process with heavy-tailed Levy measure. A central point of the paper is that we make ful…
We consider random walks indexed by arbitrary finite random or deterministic trees. We derive a simple sufficient criterion which ensures that the maximal displacement of the tree-indexed random walk is determined by a single large jump. This criterion is given in terms of four quantities : the tail and the expectation of the random walk steps, the height of the tree and the number of its vertices. The results are applied to critical Galton--Watson trees with offspring distributions in the domain of attraction of a stable law.
In this paper, we present several heavy-tailed distributions belonging to the new class J of distributions obeying the principle of a single big jump introduced by Beck et al. [1]. We describe the structure of this class from different angles. First, we show that heavy-tailed distributions in the class J are automatically strongly heavy-tailed and thus have tails which are not too irregular. Second, we show that such distributions are not necessarily weakly tail equivalent to a subexponential distribution. We also show that the class of heavy-tailed distributions in J which are neither long-ta…
Let $(X_t)_{t\ge 0}$ be a symmetric strong Markov process generated by non-local regular Dirichlet form $(D,\D(D))$ as follows \begin{equation*} \begin{split} & D(f,g)=\int_{\R^d}\int_{\R^d}\big(f(x)-f(y)\big)\big(g(x)-g(y)\big) J(x,y)\,dx\,dy, \quad f,g\in \D(D) \end{split} \end{equation*} where $J(x,y)$ is a strictly positive and symmetric measurable function on $\R^d\times \R^d$. We study the intrinsic hypercontractivity, intrinsic supercontractivity and intrinsic ultracontractivity for the Feynman-Kac semigroup $$ T^V_t(f)(x)=\Ee^x\left(\exp\Big(-\int_0^tV(X_s)\,ds\Big)f(X_t)\right),\,\, x…
In this note, we consider random walks in the quarter plane with arbitrary big jumps. We announce the extension to that class of models of the analytic approach of [G. Fayolle, R. Iasnogorodski, and V. Malyshev, Random walks in the quarter plane, Springer-Verlag, Berlin (1999)], initially valid for walks with small steps in the quarter plane. New technical challenges arise, most of them being tackled in the framework of generalized boundary value problems on compact Riemann surfaces.
We propose a class of strongly efficient rare event simulation estimators for random walks and compound Poisson processes with a regularly varying increment/jump-size distribution in a general large deviations regime. Our estimator is based on an importance sampling strategy that hinges on the heavy-tailed sample path large deviations result recently established in Rhee, Blanchet, and Zwart (2016). The new estimators are straightforward to implement and can be used to systematically evaluate the probability of a wide range of rare events with bounded relative error. They are "universal" in the…
In this paper, we study the following nonlinear backward stochastic integral partial differential equation with jumps \begin{equation*} \left\{ \begin{split} -d V(t,x) =&\displaystyle\inf_{u\in U}\bigg\{H(t,x,u, DV(t,x),D Φ(t,x), D^2 V(t,x),\int_E \left(\mathcal I V(t,e,x,u)+Ψ(t,x+g(t,e,x,u))\right)l(t,e)ν(de)) \\ &+\displaystyle\int_{E}\big[\mathcal I V(t,e,x,u)-\displaystyle (g(t, e,x,u), D V(t,x))\big]ν(d e)+\int_{E}\big[\mathcal I Ψ(t,e,x,u)\big]ν(d e)\bigg\}dt\\ &-Φ(t,x)dW(t)-\displaystyle\int_{E} Ψ(t, e,x)\tildeμ(d e,dt),\\ V(T,x)=& \ h(x), \end{split} \right. \end{equation*} where $\til…
Consider the symmetric non-local Dirichlet form $(D,\D(D))$ given by $$ D(f,f)=\int_{\R^d}\int_{\R^d}\big(f(x)-f(y)\big)^2 J(x,y)\,dx\,dy $$with $\D(D)$ the closure of the set of $C^1$ functions on $\R^d$ with compact support under the norm $\sqrt{D_1(f,f)}$, where $D_1(f,f):=D(f,f)+\int f^2(x)\,dx$ and $J(x,y)$ is a nonnegative symmetric measurable function on $\R^d\times \R^d$. Suppose that there is a Hunt process $(X_t)_{t\ge 0}$ on $\R^d$ corresponding to $(D,\D(D))$, and that $(L,\D(L))$ is its infinitesimal generator. We study the intrinsic ultracontractivity for the Feynman-Kac semigrou…
One dimensional pinning models have been widely studied in the physical and mathematical literature, also in presence of disorder. Roughly speaking, they undergo a transition between a delocalized phase and a localized one. In mathematical terms these models are obtained by modifying the distribution of a discrete renewal process via a Boltzmann factor with an energy that contains only one body potentials. For some more complex models, notably pinning models based on higher dimensional renewals, it has been shown that other phases may be present. We study a generalization of the one dimensiona…
Let $X_t^\sharp$ be a multivariate process of the form $X_t =Y_t - Z_t$, $X_0=x$, killed at some terminal time $T$, where $Y_t$ is a Markov process having only jumps of the length smaller than $δ$, and $Z_t$ is a compound Poisson process with jumps of the length bigger than $δ$ for some fixed $δ>0$. Under the assumptions that the summands in $Z_t$ are sub-exponential, we investigate the asymptotic behaviour of the potential function $u(x)= E^x \int_0^\infty \ell(X_s^\sharp)ds$. The case of heavy-tailed entries in $Z_t$ corresponds to the case of "big claims" in insurance models and is of pract…
We consider operators of the form $L u(x) = \sum_{y \in \mathbb{Z}} k(x-y) \big( u(y) - u(x)\big)$ on the one-dimensional lattice with symmetric, integrable kernel $k$. We prove several results stating that under certain conditions on the kernel the operator $L$ satisfies the curvature-dimension condition $CD_Υ(0,F)$ (recently introduced by two of the authors) with some $CD$-function $F$, where attention is also paid to the asymptotic properties of $F$ (exponential growth at infinity and power-type behaviour near zero). We show that $CD_Υ(0,F)$ implies a Li-Yau inequality for positive solution…
We consider a two-node fluid network with batch arrivals of random size having a heavy-tailed distribution. We are interested in the tail asymptotics for the stationary distribution of a two-dimensional queue-length process. The tail asymptotics have been well studied for two-dimensional reflecting processes where jumps have either a bounded or an unbounded light-tailed distribution. However, presence of heavy tails totally changes the asymptotics. Here we focus on the case of strong stability where both nodes release fluid with sufficiently high speeds to minimise their mutual influence. We s…
We consider random walks with finite second moment which drifts to $-\infty$ and have heavy tail. We focus on the events when the minimum and the final value of this walk belong to some compact set. We first specify the associated probability. Then, conditionally on such an event, we finely describe the trajectory of the random walk. It yields a decomposition theorem with respect to a random time giving a big jump whose distribution can be described explicitly.
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…
A subcritical branching process in random environment (BPRE) is considered whose associated random walk does not satisfy the Cramer condition. The asymptotics for the survival probability of the process is investigated, and a Yaglom type conditional limit theorem is proved for the number of particles up to moment $n$ given survival to this moment. Contrary to other types of subcritical BPRE, the limiting distribution is not discrete. We also show that the process survives for a long time owing to a single big jump of the associate random walk accompanied by a population explosion at the beginn…
Let $X$ be a Lévy process with regularly varying Lévy measure $ν$. We obtain sample-path large deviations for scaled processes $\bar X_n(t) \triangleq X(nt)/n$ and obtain a similar result for random walks. Our results yield detailed asymptotic estimates in scenarios where multiple big jumps in the increment are required to make a rare event happen; we illustrate this through detailed conditional limit theorems. In addition, we investigate connections with the classical large deviations framework. In that setting, we show that a weak large deviation principle (with logarithmic speed) holds, but…
The asymptotic tail behaviour of sums of independent subexponential random variables is well understood, one of the main characteristics being the principle of the single big jump. We study the case of dependent subexponential random variables, for both deterministic and random sums, using a fresh approach, by considering conditional independence structures on the random variables. We seek sufficient conditions for the results of the theory with independent random variables still to hold. For a subexponential distribution, we introduce the concept of a boundary class of functions, which we hop…
We prove here that the height function associated to non-simple exclusion processes with arbitrary jump-length converges to the solution of the Kardar-Parisi-Zhang SPDE under suitable scaling and renormalization. This extends the work of Dembo-Tsai'16 for arbitrary jump-length and Goncalves-Jara '17 for the non-stationary regime. Thus we answer a ``Big Picture Question" from the AIM workshop on KPZ and also expand on the almost empty set of non-integrable and non-stationary particle systems for which weak KPZ universality is proven. We use an approximate microscopic Cole-Hopf transform as in D…
We prove the universal asymptotically almost sure non-singularity of general Ginibre and Wigner ensembles of random matrices when the distribution of the entries are independent but not necessarily identically distributed and may depend on the size of the matrix. These models include adjacency matrices of random graphs and also sparse, generalized, universal and banded random matrices. We find universal rates of convergence and precise estimates for the probability of singularity which depend only on the size of the biggest jump of the distribution functions governing the entries of the matrix…
Functional equations (FE) arise quite naturally in the analysis of stochastic systems of different kinds : queueing and telecommunication networks, random walks, enumeration of planar lattice walks, etc. Frequently, the object is to determine the probability generating function of some positive random vector in $Z\_n^+$. Although the situation n = 1 is more classical, we quote an interesting non local functional equation which appeared in modelling a divide and conquer protocol for a muti-access broadcast channel. As for n = 2, we outline the theory reducing these linear FEs to boundary value …
We propose a novel complex-analytic method for sums of i.i.d. random variables that are heavy-tailed and integer-valued. The method combines singularity analysis, Lindelöf integrals, and bivariate saddle points. As an application, we prove three theorems on precise large and moderate deviations which provide a local variant of a result by S. V. Nagaev (1973). The theorems generalize five theorems by A. V. Nagaev (1968) on stretched exponential laws $p(k) = c\exp( -k^α)$ and apply to logarithmic hazard functions $c\exp( - (\log k)^β)$, $β>2$; they cover the big jump domain as well as the small …
We introduce a reversible Markovian coagulation-fragmentation process on the set of partitions of $\{1,\ldots,L\}$ into disjoint intervals. Each interval can either split or merge with one of its two neighbors. The invariant measure can be seen as the Gibbs measure for a homogeneous pinning model \cite{cf:GBbook}. Depending on a parameter $λ$, the typical configuration can be either dominated by a single big interval (delocalized phase), or be composed of many intervals of order $1$ (localized phase), or the interval length can have a power law distribution (critical regime). In the three case…
