# The reflection principle and conditioned RWs

I haven’t published a post about probability for far too long. Several are queued, so perhaps this will be the start of a deluge.

Anyway, with my advisor at Technion, I’m still working on some problems concerning Gaussian random walk subject to some conditioning which is complicated, but in practice (we hope) only mildly different to conditioning the walk to stay positive. Our conditioning at step n depends on some external randomness, but also on the future trajectory of the walk (related to the embedding of the walk in a 2D DGFF), thus ruining the possibility of applying the Markov property in any proof without significant preliminary work.

It seemed worth writing briefly about some of these results in a slightly simpler setting. The goal is to assemble many of the ingredients required to prove a local limit for Gaussian random walk conditioned to stay positive, in a sense which will be clarified towards the end. This is not the best way to go about getting scaling limits (as discussed briefly here, and for which see references [Ig74] and [Bo76]), and it’s probably not the best way to get local limits in the simplest setting, but it’s the method we are currently working to generalise, and follows the outline of [B-JD05], but in much less technical detail.

Probabilities via the reflection principle

We start with Brownian motion. The reflection principle, as described briefly in this post from the depths of history, is a classical technique for studying the maximum of Brownian motion. Roughly speaking, we exploit the fact that $(W_t,t\ge 0)\stackrel{d}=(-W_t,t\ge 0)$, but we then apply this at the hitting time of a particular positive value, using the Strong Markov Property.

Let $S_t=\max_{0\le s\le t}W_s$ be the running maximum of the Brownian motion $W_t$, and $\tau_b$ the hitting time of b. Then

$\mathbb{P}(S_t\ge b, B_t\le a)=\mathbb{P}(\tau_b

which, by SMP at $\tau_b$ and the reflection invariance of a standard BM, is equal to

$\mathbb{P}(\tau_b

This obviously assumed $b\ge a$, but if we set $b=a$, we find

$\mathbb{P}(S_t\ge b)=\mathbb{P}(B_t>b)+\mathbb{P}(S_t\ge b,B_t\le b)=2\mathbb{P}(B_t\ge b).$

Or, in other words, $S_t\stackrel{d}=|B_t|$.

While we can’t derive such nice equalities in distribution, the reflection principle is robust enough to treat more complicated settings, such as Brownian bridge.

We might want to ask about the maximum of a standard Brownian bridge, but we can be more general, and ask about the maximum of a Brownian bridge with drift (let’s say general bridge here). It’s important to remember that a general Brownian bridge has the same distribution as a linear transformation of a standard Brownian bridge. Everything is Gaussian, after all. So asking whether the maximum of a general Brownian bridge is less than a particular value is equivalent to asking whether a standard Brownian bridge lies below a fixed line. Wherever possible, we make such a transformation at the start and perform the simplest version of the required calculation.

So, suppose we have a bridge B from (0,0) to (t,a), and we want to study $\max_{s\in[0,t]} B_s$. Fix some $b>a$, and work with a standard Brownian motion $W_s$. By a similar argument to before,

$\mathbb{P}(\tau_b\le t, W_t\in[a,a+\mathrm{d}x]) = \mathbb{P}(W_t\in [2b-a-\mathrm{d}x,2b-a]) = \frac{\mathrm{d}x}{\sqrt{2\pi t}}e^{-(2b-a)^2/2t},$

and

$\mathbb{P}(W_t\in[a,a+\mathrm{d}x])=\frac{\mathrm{d}x}{\sqrt{2\pi t}}e^{-a^2/2t}.$

So

$\mathbb{P}(\max_{s\in[0,t]}B_t\ge b) = \exp\left(\frac{-(2b-a)^2 + a^2}{2t}\right).$

Random walk conditioned to stay positive

Our main concern is conditioning to stay above zero. Let $\mathbb{P}_{0,x}^{t,y}$ be some complete if cumbersome notation for a Brownian bridge B from (0,x) to (t,y). Then another simple transformation of the previous result gives

$\mathbb{P}_{0,x}^{t,y}(B_s\ge 0,\,s\in[0,t])=1-\exp\left( \frac{-(x+y)^2 + (x-y)^2}{2t} \right)= 1-\exp\left(-\frac{2xy}{t}\right).$

Then, if $xy\ll t$, we can approximate this by $\frac{2xy}{t}$. (*)

Extend the notation so $\mathbb{P}_{0,x}$ describes Brownian motion started from (0,x). Then integrating over y, gives

$\mathbb{P}_{0,x}(B_s\ge 0,\, s\in[0,t] ) = \frac{x}{t}\mathbb{E}[B_t\vee 0] = \sqrt{\frac{2}{\pi}} \frac{x}{\sqrt{t}}.$

(It might appear that we have integrated the approximation (*) over parts of the range where it is not a valid approximation, but the density of $B_t=\Theta(t)$ vanishes exponentially fast, and so actually it’s not a problem.)

We now want to extend this to random walks. Some remarks:

• We used the Gaussian property of Brownian motion fairly heavily throughout this derivation. In general random walks are not Gaussian, though we can make life easier by focusing on this case.
• We also used the continuity property of Brownian motion when we applied the reflection principle. For a general random walk, it’s hopeless to consider the hitting times of individual values. We have to consider instead the hitting times of regions $\tau_{(-\infty,b]}$, and so on. One can still apply SMP and a reflection principle, but this gives bounds rather than equalities. (The exception is simple random walk, for which other more combinatorial methods may be available anyway.)
• On the flip side, if we are interested in Brownian motion/bridge staying positive, we can’t start it from zero, as then the probability of this event is zero, by Blumenthal’s 0-1 law. By contrast, we can certainly ask about random walk staying positive when started from zero without taking a limit.

A useful technique will be the viewpoint of random walk as the values taken by Brownian motion at a sequence of stopping times. This Skorohod embedding is slightly less obvious when considering a general random walk bridge inside a general Brownian bridge, but is achievable. We want to study quantities like

$\mathbb{P}(S_k\ge 0,\, k=1,\ldots,n \big| S_0=x,S_n=y),$

where for simplicity let’s just take $(S_k,k\ge 0)$ to be a random walk with standard Gaussian increments. It’s possible we might want to take a scaling limit in x and y as functions of n. But first if we take x,y fixed, and embed the random walk bridge with these endpoints into the corresponding Brownian bridge with $t\approx n$, we are then faced with the question:

What’s the probability that the Brownian bridge goes below zero, but the embedded RW with n steps does not?

If the Brownian bridge conditioned to go below zero spends time $\Theta_p(n)$ below zero, then for large n it’s asymptotically very unlikely that the n places at which we embed the random walk avoids this set of intervals.

Several technical estimates are required to make this analysis rigorous. The conclusion is that there exists a function $f(x)$ for which $f(x)=x(1+o(1))$ as $x\rightarrow\infty$, such that

$q_n(x,y):=\mathbb{P}(S_k\ge 0,\, k=0,1,\ldots,n \,\big|\, S_0=x,S_n=y) \sim \frac{2f(x)f(y)}{n},$

$\text{and}\quad q_n(x):=\mathbb{P}(S_k\ge 0,\,k=0,1,\ldots,n\,\big|\, S_0=x)\sim \sqrt{\frac{2}{\pi}}\frac{f(x)}{\sqrt{n}}.$

As earlier, the second is obtained from the first by integrating over suitable y. This function $f$ has to account for the extra complications when either end-point is near zero, for which the event where the Brownian motion goes negative without the random walk going negative requires additional care.

Limits for the conditioned random walk

In the previous post on this topic, we addressed scaling limits in space and time for conditioned random walks. But we don’t have to look at the classical Donsker scaling to see the effects of conditioning to stay positive. In our setting, we are interested in studying the distribution of $S_m$ conditional on the event $(S_1\ge 0,S_2\ge 0,\ldots, S_n\ge 0)$, with limits taken in the order $n\rightarrow\infty$ and then $m\rightarrow\infty$.

(At a more general level, it is meaningful to describe the random walk conditioned on staying positive forever. Although this would a priori require conditioning on an event of probability zero, it can be handled formally as an example of an h-transform.)

As explained in that previous post, the scaling invariance of the Bessel process $W^+$ (which it’s not unreasonable to think of as ‘Brownian motion conditioned to stay non-negative’) suggests that this limit should exist, and be given by the entrance law of $W^+$. But this is hard to extract from a scaling limit.

However, we can use the previous estimate to start a direct calculation.

$\mathbb{P}(S_m\in \mathrm{d}y \,\big|\, S_k\ge 0,\, k=1,\ldots,n) = \frac{q_m(0,y) q_{n-m}(y) \mathbb{P}(S_m\in\mathrm{d}y)}{q_n(0)}.$

Here, we used the Markov property at time m to split the event that $S_m=y$ and the walk stays positive into two time-intervals. We will later take m large, so we may approximate as

$\frac{2f(0)f(y)/m \times \sqrt{\frac{2}{\pi}}f(y)/\sqrt{n-m}\times \mathbb{P}(S_m\in\mathrm{d}y) } { \sqrt{\frac{2}{\pi}}f(0)/\sqrt{n}}\stackrel{n\rightarrow\infty}=\frac{2f(y)^2}{m}\mathbb{P}(S_m\in\mathrm{d}y).$

This final probability emphasises that as $m\rightarrow\infty$ we only really have to consider $y=\Theta(\sqrt{m})$, so set $y=z\sqrt{m}$, and we obtain

$\lim_{n\rightarrow\infty}\mathbb{P}(\frac{S_m}{\sqrt{m}}\in\mathrm{d}z\,\big|\, S_k\ge 0,\,k=1,\ldots,n)$

$\sim \sqrt{m}\cdot\frac{2z^2m}{m}\cdot \frac{1}{\sqrt{2\pi}}\frac{1}{\sqrt{m}}e^{-z^2/2} = \sqrt{\frac{2}{\pi}}z^2 e^{-z^2/2}.$

This is precisely the entrance law of the 3-dimensional Bessel process, usually denoted $R$. This process is invariant under time-rescaling in the same fashion as Brownian motion. Indeed, one representation of R is as the radial part of a three-dimensional Brownian motion, given by independent BMs in each coordinate. (See [Pi75] for explanation of the relation to ‘BM conditioned to stay non-negative’.) We could complete the analogy by showing that $q_n(x,y)$ converges to the transition density of R as well. (Cf the prelude to Theorem 2.2 of [B-JD05].)

Final remarks

The order of taking limits is truly crucial. We can also obtain a distributional scaling limit at time n under conditioning to stay non-negative up to time n. But then this is the size-biased normal distribution $\sim ze^{-z^2/2}$ (the Rayleigh distribution), rather than the square-size-biased normal distribution we say in this setting. And we can exactly see why. Relative to the normal distribution which applies in the absence of conditioning, we require size-biasing to account for the walk staying positive up to time m, and then also size-biasing to account for the walk staying positive for the rest of time (or up to n in the $n\rightarrow\infty$ limit if you prefer).

The asymptotics for $q_n(x,y)$ were the crucial step, for which only heuristics are present in this post. It remains the case that estimates of this kind form the crucial step in other more exotic conditioning scenarios. This is immediately visible (even if the random walk notation is rather exotic) in, for example, Proposition 2.2 of [CHL17], of which we currently require a further level of generalisation.

References

[Bo76] – Bolthausen – On a functional central limit theorem for random walks conditioned to stay positive

[B-JD05] – Bryn-Jones, Doney – A functional limit theorem for random walk conditioned to stay non-negative

[CHL17] – Cortines, Hartung, Louidor – The structure of extreme level sets in branching Brownian motion

[Ig74] – Iglehart – Functional central limit theorems for random walks conditioned to stay positive

[Pi75] – Pitman – One-dimensional Brownian motion and the three-dimensional Bessel process

# Tightness in Skorohod Space

This post continues the theme of revising topics in the analytic toolkit relevant to proving convergence of stochastic processes. Of particular interest is the question of how to prove that families of Markov chains might have a process scaling limit converging to a solution of some stochastic differential equation, in a generalisation of Donsker’s theorem for Brownian motion. In this post, however, we address more general aspects of convergence of stochastic processes, with particular reference to Skorohod space.

Topological Background

I’ve discussed Skorohod space in a previous post. For now, we focus attention on compactly supported functions, D[0,T]. Some of what follows can be extended to the infinite-time setting easily, and some requires more work. Although we can define a metric on the space of cadlag functions in lots of ways, it is more useful to think topologically, or at least with a more vague sense of metric. We say two cadlag functions are close to one another if there is a reparameterisation of the time-axis, (a function [0,T] to itself) that is uniformly close to the identity function, and when applied to one of the cadlag functions, brings it close to the other cadlag function. Heuristically, two cadlag functions are close if their large jumps are close to one another and of similar size, and if they are uniformly close elsewhere. It is worth remembering that a cadlag function on even an unbounded interval can have only countably many jumps, and only finitely many with magnitude greater than some threshold on any compact interval.

For much of the theory one would like to use, it is useful for the spaces under investigation to be separable. Recall a topological space is separable if there exists a countable dense subset. Note in particular that D[0,T] is not separable under the uniform metric, since we can define $f_x(\cdot)=\mathbf{1}_{(\cdot \ge x)}$ for each $x\in[0,T]$, then $||f_x-f_y||_\infty=1$ whenever $x\ne y$. In particular, we have an uncountable collection of disjoint open sets given by the balls $\mathcal{B}(f_x,\frac12)$, and so the space is not countable. Similarly, $C[0,\infty)$ is not separable. A counterexample might be given by considering functions which take the values {0,1} on the integers. Thus we have a map from $\{0,1\}^{\mathbb{N}}\rightarrow C[0,\infty)$, where the uniform distance between any two distinct image points is at least one, hence the open balls of radius 1/2 around each image point give the same contradiction as before. However, the Stone-Weierstrass theorem shows that C[0,T] is separable, as we can approximate any such function uniformly well by a polynomial, and thus uniformly well by a polynomial with rational coefficients.

In any case, it can be shown that D[0,T] is separable with respect to the natural choice of metric. It can also be shown that there is a metric which gives the same open sets (hence is a topologically equivalent metric) under which D[0,T] is complete, and hence a Polish space.

Compactness in C[0,T] and D[0,T]

We are interested in tightness of measures on D[0,T], so first we need to address compactness for sets of deterministic functions in D[0,T]. First, we consider C[0,T]. Here, the conditions for a set of functions to be compact is given by the celebrated Arzela-Ascoli theorem. We are really interested in compactness as a property of size, so we consider instead relative compactness. A set is relatively compact (sometimes pre-compact) if its closure is compact. For the existence of subsequential limits, this is identical to compactness, only now we allow the possibility of the limit point lying outside the set.

We note that the function $C[0,T]\rightarrow \mathbb{R}$ given by $||f||_\infty$ is continuous, and hence uniform boundedness is certainly a required condition for compactness in C[0,T]. Arzela-Ascoli states that uniform boundedness plus equicontinuity is sufficient for a set of such functions to be compact. Equicontinuity should be thought of as uniform continuity that is uniform among all the functions in the set, rather than just within the argument of an individual particular function.

For identical reasons, we need uniform boundedness for relative compactness in D[0,T], but obviously uniform continuity won’t work as a criterion for discontinuous functions! We seek some analogue of the modulus of continuity that ignores jumps. We define

$\omega'_\delta(f):=\inf_{\{t_i\}} \max_i \sup_{s,t\in[t_{i-1},t_i)} |f(s)-f(t)|,$

where the infimum is taken over all meshes $0=t_0 with $t_i-t_{i-1}>\delta$. Note that as $\delta\downarrow 0$, we can, if we want, place the $t_i$ so that large jumps of the function f take place over the boundaries between adjacent parts of the mesh. In particular, for a given cadlag function, it can be shown fairly easily that $\omega'_\delta(f)\downarrow 0$ as $\delta\rightarrow 0$. Then, unsurprisingly, in a similar fashion to the Arzela-Ascoli theorem, it follows that a set of functions $A\subset D[0,T]$ is relatively compact if it is uniformly bounded, and

$\lim_{\delta\rightarrow 0} \sup_{f\in A}\omega'_\delta(f)=0.$

Note that this ‘modulus of continuity’ needs to decay uniformly across the set of functions, but that we do not need to choose the mesh at level $\delta$ uniformly across all functions. This would obviously not work, as then the functions $\mathbf{1}_{(\cdot\ge x_n)}$ for any sequence $x_n\rightarrow x$ would not be compact, but they clearly converge in Skorohod space!

Tightness in C[0,T] and D[0,T]

Naturally, we are mainly interested in (probability) measures on D[0,T], and in particular conditions for tightness on this space. Recall a family of measures is tight if for any $\epsilon>0$, there exists some compact set A such that

$\pi(A)>1-\epsilon,\quad \forall \pi\in\Pi.$

So, for measures $(\mu_n)$ on D[0,T], the sequence is tight precisely if for any $\epsilon>0$, there exists $M,\delta$ and some N such that for any n>N, both

$\mu_n(||f||_\infty >M)\le \epsilon,\quad \mu_n(\omega'_\delta(f)>\epsilon)\le \epsilon$

hold. In fact, the second condition controls variation sufficiently strongly, that we can replace the first condition with

$\mu_n(|f(0)|>M)\le \epsilon.$

Often we might be taking some sort of scaling limit of these processes in D[0,T], where the jumps become so small in the limit that we expect the limit process to be continuous, perhaps an SDE or diffusion. If we can replace $\omega'_\delta$ by $\omega_\delta$, the standard modulus of continuity, then we have the additional that any weak limit lies in C[0,T].

In general, to prove convergence of some stochastic processes, we will want to show that the processes are tight, by demonstrating the properties above, or something equivalent. Then Prohorov’s theorem (which I tend to think of as a probabilistic functional version of Bolzano-Weierstrass) asserts that the family of processes has a weak subsequential limit. Typically, one then shows that any weak subsequential limit must have the law of some particular random process. Normally this is achieved by showing some martingale property (eg for an SDE) in the limit, often by using the Skorohod representation theorem to use almost sure subsequential convergence rather than merely weak convergence. Then one argues that there is a unique process with this property and a given initial distribution. So since all weak subsequential limits are this given process, in fact the whole family has a weak limit.

# Ornstein-Uhlenbeck Process

A large part of my summer has been spent proving some technical results pertaining to the convergence of some functionals of a critical Frozen Percolation process. This has been worthwhile, but hasn’t involved a large amount of reading around anything in particular, which has probably contributed to the lack of posts in recent months. Perhaps a mixture of that and general laziness?

Anyway, it turns out that the limit of the discrete processes under consideration is the Ornstein-Uhlenbeck process. The sense in which this limit holds (or at least, for now, is conjectured to hold) is something for another article. However, I thought it would be worth writing a bit about this particular process and why it is interesting.

The O-U process is described by the SDE

$dX_t=-\beta (X_t-\mu)dt+\sigma dW_t,$

where W is a standard Brownian motion. We think of $\mu$ as the ‘mean’. The extent to which this behaves as a mean will be discussed shortly. The process is then mean-reverting, in the sense that the drift is directed against deviations of the process away from this mean. The parameter $\beta$ measures the extent of this mean reversion, while as usual $\sigma$ controls the magnitude of the Brownian noise.

The motivation for considering mean-reverting processes is considerable. One measure of this is how many equations with articles on Wikipedia turn out to be precisely this Ornstein-Uhlenbeck process with different context or notation. In most cases, the motivation arises because Brownian motion is for some reason unsuitable to take as a canonical random process. We will see why the O-U process is somehow the next most canonical choice for a random process.

In physics, it is sometimes unsatisfactory to model the trajectory of a particle with Brownian motion (even though this motivated the name…) as the velocities are undefined (see this post from ages ago), or infinite, depending on your definition of velocity. Using the Ornstein-Uhlenbeck process to model the velocity of a particle is often a satisfactory alternative. It is not unreasonable that there should be a mean velocity, presumably zero. The mean reversion models a frictional force from the underlying medium, while the Brownian noise describes random collisions with similar particles.

In financial applications, the Ornstein-Uhlenbeck model has been applied, apparently under the title of the Vasicek model since the 70s to describe quantities such as interest rates where there is some underlying reason to ban indefinite growth, and require mean reversion. Another setting might be a commodity which, because of external driving factors, has over the relevant time-scale well-defined mean value, around which mean-reverting fluctuations on the observed time-scale can be described. As with other financial models, it is undesirable for a process to take negative values. This can be fixed by taking a positive mean, then setting the volatility to be state dependent, decaying to zero as the state tends to zero, so for small values, the positive drift dominates. I don’t fully understand why patching this aspect is significantly more important than patching any other non-realistic properties of the model, but the resulting SDE is, at least in one particular case where the volatility is $\sqrt{X_t}$, called the Cox-Ingersoll-Ross model.

Anyway, a mathematical reason to pay particular attention to this Ornstein-Uhlenbeck process is the following. It is the unique family of continuous Markov processes to have a stationary Gaussian distribution. It is the mean-reverting property that is key. There is no chance of Brownian motion having any stationary distribution, let alone a Gaussian one. If this isn’t clear, you can convince yourself by thinking of the stationary distribution of SRW on $\mathbb{Z}$. Since the process is space-homogeneous, the only stationary measure is the uniform measure.

I want to focus on one particular property of the O-U process, through which some other aspects will be illuminated. If we take $\sigma=\beta$ and let $\beta\rightarrow\infty$, then the stationary processes converge to white noise.

First though, we should note this is perhaps the easiest SDE to solve explicitly. We consider $X_t e^{\theta t}$, and applying Ito’s lemma rapidly gives

$X_t=\mu + (X_0-\mu)e^{-\beta t}+\sigma\int_0^t e^{-\beta(t-s)}dW_s.$

W is Gaussian so the distribution of $X_t$ conditional on $X_0=x_0$ is also Gaussian, and since W is centred we can read off the expectation. Applying the Ito isometry then gives the variance. In conclusion:

$X_t\stackrel{d}{=}\mathcal{N}(\mu+(x_0-\mu)e^{-\beta t}, \frac{\sigma^2}{\beta}(1-e^{-2\beta t})).$

In particular, note that the variation has no dependence on $x_0$. So as t grows to infinity, this converges to $\mathcal{N}(\mu, \frac{\sigma^2}{\beta})$. This is, unsurprisingly, the stationary distribution of the process.

To address the white noise convergence, we need to consider $\text{Cov}(X_0,X_t)$ in stationarity. Let’s assume WLOG that $\mu=0$ so most of the expectations will vanish. We obtain

$\text{Cov}(X_0,X_t)=\mathbb{E}[X_0X_t]=\mathbb{E}_{x_0}\left[\mathbb{E}[X_t| X_0=x_0]\right]=\mathbb{E}[X_0^2 e^{-\beta t}]= \frac{sigma^2}{2\beta}2^{-\beta t}.$

If we want, the Chapman-Kolmogorov equations work particularly nicely here, and we are able to derive a PDE for the evolution of the density function, though obviously this is very related to the result above. This PDE is known as the Fokker-Planck equation.

So, in particular, when $\sigma=\beta\rightarrow \infty$, this covariance tends to 0. I’m not purporting that this constitutes a proof that the Ornstein-Uhlenbeck processes converge as processes to white noise. It’s not obvious how to define process convergence, not least because there’s flexibility about how to view white noise as a process. One doesn’t really want to define the value of white noise at a particular time, but you can consider the covariance of integrals of white noise over disjoint intervals as a limit, in similar way to convergence of finite dimensional distributions.

The fact that taking $\beta=0$ gives Brownian motion, and this case gives white noise, intermediate versions of the Ornstein-Uhlenbeck process are sometimes referred to as coloured noise.

Finally, the Ornstein-Uhlenbeck process emerges as the scaling limit of mean-reverting discrete Markov chains, analogous to Brownian motion as the scaling limit of simple random walk. One particularly nice example is the Ehrenfest Urn model. We have two urns, and 2N balls. In each time step one of the 2N balls is chosen uniformly at random, and it is moved to the other urn. So a ball is more likely to be removed from an urn with more than N balls. We can view this as a model for molecules in, say a room, with a slightly porous division between them, eg a small hole. More complicated interface models in higher dimensions lead to fascinating PDEs, such as the famous KPZ equation, which are the subject of much ongoing interest in this area.

This result can be an application of the theory of convergence of Markov chains to SDEs pioneered by Stroock and Varadhan, about which more may follow very soon. In any case, it turns out that the fluctuations in the Ehrenfest Urn model are on the scale of $\sqrt{n}$, unsurprisingly, and are given by a centred Ornstein-Uhlenbeck process.

Investigating this has reminded me how much I’ve forgotten, or perhaps how little I ever knew, about the technicalities of stochastic processes are their convergence results, so next up will probably be a summary of all the useful definitions and properties for this sort of analysis.