A Markov tree is a random vector indexed by the nodes of a tree whose distribution is determined by the distributions of pairs of neighbouring variables and a list of conditional independence relations. Upon an assumption on the tails of the Markov kernels associated to these pairs, the conditional distribution of the self-normalized random vector when the variable at the root of the tree tends to infinity converges weakly to a random vector of coupled random walks called a tail tree. If, in addition, the conditioning variable has a regularly varying tail, the Markov tree satisfies a form of one-component regular variation. Changing the location of the root, that is, changing the conditioning variable, yields a different tail tree. When the tails of the marginal distributions of the conditioning variables are balanced, these tail trees are connected by a formula that generalizes the time change formula for regularly varying stationary time series. The formula is most easily understood when the various one-component regular variation statements are tied up into a single multi-component statement. The theory of multi-component regular variation is worked out for general random vectors, not necessarily Markov trees, with an eye towards other models, graphical or otherwise.

Providing optimal strategies for maintaining technical systems in good working condition is an important goal in reliability engineering. The main aim of this paper is to propose some optimal maintenance policies for coherent systems based on some partial information about the status of components in the system. For this purpose, in the first part of the paper, we propose two criteria under which we compute the probability of the number of failed components in a coherent system with independent and identically distributed components. The first proposed criterion utilizes partial information about the status of the components with a single inspection of the system, and the second one uses partial information about the status of component failure under double monitoring of the system. In the computation of both criteria, we use the notion of the signature vector associated with the system. Some stochastic comparisons between two coherent systems have been made based on the proposed concepts. Then, by imposing some cost functions, we introduce new approaches to the optimal corrective and preventive maintenance of coherent systems. To illustrate the results, some examples are examined numerically and graphically.

In this paper, a reflected stochastic differential equation (SDE) with jumps is studied for the case where the constraint acts on the law of the solution rather than on its paths. These reflected SDEs have been approximated by Briand et al. (2016) using a numerical scheme based on particles systems, when no jumps occur. The main contribution of this paper is to prove the existence and the uniqueness of the solutions to this kind of reflected SDE with jumps and to generalize the results obtained by Briand et al. (2016) to this context.

Suppose X is a multidimensional diffusion process. Assume that at time zero the state of X is fully observed, but at time $T>0$ only linear combinations of its components are observed. That is, one only observes the vector $L X_T$ for a given matrix L. In this paper we show how samples from the conditioned process can be generated. The main contribution of this paper is to prove that guided proposals, introduced in [35], can be used in a unified way for both uniformly elliptic and hypo-elliptic diffusions, even when L is not the identity matrix. This is illustrated by excellent performance in two challenging cases: a partially observed twice-integrated diffusion with multiple wells and the partially observed FitzHugh–Nagumo model.

We investigate the Hawkes processes on the positive real line exhibiting both self-excitation and inhibition. Each point of such a point process impacts its future intensity by the addition of a signed reproduction function. The case of a nonnegative reproduction function corresponds to self-excitation, and has been widely investigated in the literature. In particular, there exists a cluster representation of the Hawkes process which allows one to apply known results for Galton–Watson trees. We use renewal techniques to establish limit theorems for Hawkes processes that have reproduction functions which are signed and have bounded support. Notably, we prove exponential concentration inequalities, extending results of Reynaud-Bouret and Roy (2006) previously proven for nonnegative reproduction functions using a cluster representation no longer valid in our case. Importantly, we establish the existence of exponential moments for renewal times of M/G/$\infty$ queues which appear naturally in our problem. These results possess interest independent of the original problem.

We consider point process convergence for sequences of independent and identically distributed random walks. The objective is to derive asymptotic theory for the largest extremes of these random walks. We show convergence of the maximum random walk to the Gumbel or the Fréchet distributions. The proofs depend heavily on precise large deviation results for sums of independent random variables with a finite moment generating function or with a subexponential distribution.

It is well-known that in a small Pólya urn, i.e., an urn where the second largest real part of an eigenvalue is at most half the largest eigenvalue, the distribution of the numbers of balls of different colours in the urn is asymptotically normal under weak additional conditions. We consider the balanced case, and then give asymptotics of the mean and the covariance matrix, showing that after appropriate normalization, the mean and covariance matrix converge to the mean and covariance matrix of the limiting normal distribution.

We study failure rate monotonicity and generalised convex transform stochastic ordering properties of random variables, with an emphasis on applications. We are especially interested in the effect of a tail-weight iteration procedure to define distributions, which is equivalent to the characterisation of moments of the residual lifetime at a given instant. For the monotonicity properties, we are mainly concerned with hereditary properties with respect to the iteration procedure providing counterexamples showing either that the hereditary property does not hold or that inverse implications are not true. For the stochastic ordering, we introduce a new criterion, based on the analysis of the sign variation of a suitable function. This criterion is then applied to prove ageing properties of parallel systems formed with components that have exponentially distributed lifetimes.

We discuss the joint temporal and contemporaneous aggregation of N independent copies of random-coefficient AR(1) processes driven by independent and identically distributed innovations in the domain of normal attraction of an $\alpha$ -stable distribution, $0< \alpha \le 2$ , as both N and the time scale n tend to infinity, possibly at different rates. Assuming that the tail distribution function of the random autoregressive coefficient regularly varies at the unit root with exponent $\beta > 0$ , we show that, for $\beta < \max (\alpha, 1)$ , the joint aggregate displays a variety of stable and non-stable limit behaviors with stability index depending on $\alpha$ , $\beta$ and the mutual increase rate of N and n. The paper extends the results of Pilipauskaitė and Surgailis (2014) from $\alpha =2$ to $0 < \alpha < 2$ .

This paper considers ergodic, continuous-time Markov chains $\{X(t)\}_{t \in (\!-\infty,\infty)}$ on $\mathbb{Z}^+=\{0,1,\ldots\}$ . For an arbitrarily fixed $N \in \mathbb{Z}^+$ , we study the conditional stationary distribution $\boldsymbol{\pi}(N)$ given the Markov chain being in $\{0,1,\ldots,N\}$ . We first characterize $\boldsymbol{\pi}(N)$ via systems of linear inequalities and identify simplices that contain $\boldsymbol{\pi}(N)$ , by examining the $(N+1) \times (N+1)$ northwest corner block of the infinitesimal generator $\textbf{\textit{Q}}$ and the subset of the first $N+1$ states whose members are directly reachable from at least one state in $\{N+1,N+2,\ldots\}$ . These results are closely related to the augmented truncation approximation (ATA), and we provide some practical implications for the ATA. Next we consider an extension of the above results, using the $(K+1) \times (K+1)$ ( $K > N$ ) northwest corner block of $\textbf{\textit{Q}}$ and the subset of the first $K+1$ states whose members are directly reachable from at least one state in $\{K+1,K+2,\ldots\}$ . Furthermore, we introduce new state transition structures called (K, N)-skip-free sets, using which we obtain the minimum convex polytope that contains $\boldsymbol{\pi}(N)$ .

The Gaussian polytope $\mathcal P_{n,d}$ is the convex hull of n independent standard normally distributed points in $\mathbb{R}^d$ . We derive explicit expressions for the probability that $\mathcal P_{n,d}$ contains a fixed point $x\in\mathbb{R}^d$ as a function of the Euclidean norm of x, and the probability that $\mathcal P_{n,d}$ contains the point $\sigma X$ , where $\sigma\geq 0$ is constant and X is a standard normal vector independent of $\mathcal P_{n,d}$ . As a by-product, we also compute the expected number of k-faces and the expected volume of $\mathcal P_{n,d}$ , thus recovering the results of Affentranger and Schneider (Discr. and Comput. Geometry, 1992) and Efron (Biometrika, 1965), respectively. All formulas are in terms of the volumes of regular spherical simplices, which, in turn, can be expressed through the standard normal distribution function $\Phi(z)$ and its complex version $\Phi(iz)$ . The main tool used in the proofs is the conic version of the Crofton formula.

In this paper, we consider functional limit theorems for Poisson cluster processes. We first present a maximal inequality for Poisson cluster processes. Then we establish a functional central limit theorem under the second moment and a functional moderate deviation principle under the Cramér condition for Poisson cluster processes. We apply these results to obtain a functional moderate deviation principle for linear Hawkes processes.

In this paper we consider random trees associated with the genealogy of Crump–Mode–Jagers processes and perform Bernoulli bond-percolation whose parameter depends on the size of the tree. Our purpose is to show the existence of a giant percolation cluster for appropriate regimes as the size grows. We stress that the family trees of Crump–Mode–Jagers processes include random recursive trees, preferential attachment trees, binary search trees for which this question has been answered by Bertoin [7], as well as (more general) m-ary search trees, fragmentation trees, and median-of-( $2\ell+1$ ) binary search trees, to name a few, where to our knowledge percolation has not yet been studied.

The equilibrium properties of allocation algorithms for networks with a large number of nodes with finite capacity are investigated. Every node receives a flow of requests. When a request arrives at a saturated node, i.e. a node whose capacity is fully utilized, an allocation algorithm may attempt to reallocate the request to a non-saturated node. For the algorithms considered, the reallocation comes at a price: either extra capacity is required in the system, or the processing time of a reallocated request is increased. The paper analyzes the properties of the equilibrium points of the associated asymptotic dynamical system when the number of nodes gets large. At this occasion the classical model of Gibbens, Hunt, and Kelly (1990) in this domain is revisited. The absence of known Lyapunov functions for the corresponding dynamical system significantly complicates the analysis. Several techniques are used. Analytic and scaling methods are used to identify the equilibrium points. We identify the subset of parameters for which the limiting stochastic model of these networks has multiple equilibrium points. Probabilistic approaches are used to prove the stability of some of them. A criterion of exponential stability with the spectral gap of the associated linear operator of equilibrium points is also obtained.

We consider the problem of numerical integration when the sampling nodes form a stationary point process on the real line. In previous papers it was argued that a naïve Riemann sum approach can cause a severe variance inflation when the sampling points are not equidistant. We show that this inflation can be avoided using a higher-order Newton–Cotes quadrature rule which exploits smoothness properties of the integrand. Under mild assumptions, the resulting estimator is unbiased and its variance asymptotically obeys a power law as a function of the mean point distance. If the Newton–Cotes rule is of sufficiently high order, the exponent of this law turns out to only depend on the point process through its mean point distance. We illustrate our findings with the stereological estimation of the volume of a compact object, suggesting alternatives to the well-established Cavalieri estimator.

In this article we prove new central limit theorems (CLTs) for several coupled particle filters (CPFs). CPFs are used for the sequential estimation of the difference of expectations with respect to filters which are in some sense close. Examples include the estimation of the filtering distribution associated to different parameters (finite difference estimation) and filters associated to partially observed discretized diffusion processes (PODDP) and the implementation of the multilevel Monte Carlo (MLMC) identity. We develop new theory for CPFs, and based upon several results, we propose a new CPF which approximates the maximal coupling (MCPF) of a pair of predictor distributions. In the context of ML estimation associated to PODDP with time-discretization $\Delta_l=2^{-l}$ , $l\in\{0,1,\dots\}$ , we show that the MCPF and the approach of Jasra, Ballesio, et al. (2018) have, under certain assumptions, an asymptotic variance that is bounded above by an expression that is of (almost) the order of $\Delta_l$ ( $\mathcal{O}(\Delta_l)$ ), uniformly in time. The $\mathcal{O}(\Delta_l)$ bound preserves the so-called forward rate of the diffusion in some scenarios, which is not the case for the CPF in Jasra et al. (2017).

We consider the Voronoi diagram generated by n independent and identically distributed $\mathbb{R}^{d}$ -valued random variables with an arbitrary underlying probability density function f on $\mathbb{R}^{d}$ , and analyze the asymptotic behaviors of certain geometric properties, such as the measure, of the Voronoi cells as n tends to infinity. We adapt the methods used by Devroye et al. (2017) to conduct a study of the asymptotic properties of two types of Voronoi cells: (1) Voronoi cells that have a fixed nucleus; (2) Voronoi cells that contain a fixed point. We show that the geometric properties of both types of cells resemble those in the case when the Voronoi diagram is generated by a homogeneous Poisson point process. Additionally, for the second type of Voronoi cells, we determine the limiting distribution, which is universal in all choices of f, of the re-scaled measure of the cells.

We consider a fractional Brownian motion with linear drift such that its unknown drift coefficient has a prior normal distribution and construct a sequential test for the hypothesis that the drift is positive versus the alternative that it is negative. We show that the problem of constructing the test reduces to an optimal stopping problem for a standard Brownian motion obtained by a transformation of the fractional Brownian motion. The solution is described as the first exit time from some set, and it is shown that its boundaries satisfy a certain integral equation, which is solved numerically.

In this paper, the signature of a multi-state coherent system with binary-state components is discussed, and then it is extended to the case of ordered system lifetimes arising from a life-test on coherent multi-state systems with the same multi-state system signature. Some properties of the multi-state system signature and the ordered multi-state system signature are also studied. The results established here are finally explained through some illustrative examples.