In mathematics, mathematical physics and the theory of stochastic processes, a harmonic function is a twice continuously differentiable function where U is an open subset of that satisfies Laplace's equation, that is,
In mathematics, the Wiener process is a real-valued continuous-time stochastic process named in honor of American mathematician Norbert Wiener for his investigations on the mathematical properties of the one-dimensional Brownian motion. It is often also called Brownian motion due to its historical connection with the physical process of the same name originally observed by Scottish botanist Robert Brown. It is one of the best known Lévy processes and occurs frequently in pure and applied mathematics, economics, quantitative finance, evolutionary biology, and physics.
In physics, a Langevin equation is a stochastic differential equation describing how a system evolves when subjected to a combination of deterministic and fluctuating ("random") forces. The dependent variables in a Langevin equation typically are collective (macroscopic) variables changing only slowly in comparison to the other (microscopic) variables of the system. The fast (microscopic) variables are responsible for the stochastic nature of the Langevin equation. One application is to Brownian motion, which models the fluctuating motion of a small particle in a fluid.
In statistical mechanics and information theory, the Fokker–Planck equation is a partial differential equation that describes the time evolution of the probability density function of the velocity of a particle under the influence of drag forces and random forces, as in Brownian motion. The equation can be generalized to other observables as well. The Fokker-Planck equation has multiple applications in information theory, graph theory, data science, finance, economics etc.
In probability theory, the Girsanov theorem tells how stochastic processes change under changes in measure. The theorem is especially important in the theory of financial mathematics as it tells how to convert from the physical measure which describes the probability that an underlying instrument will take a particular value or values to the risk-neutral measure which is a very useful tool for evaluating the value of derivatives on the underlying.
A stochastic differential equation (SDE) is a differential equation in which one or more of the terms is a stochastic process, resulting in a solution which is also a stochastic process. SDEs have many applications throughout pure mathematics and are used to model various behaviours of stochastic models such as stock prices, random growth models or physical systems that are subjected to thermal fluctuations.
In mathematics, the Milstein method is a technique for the approximate numerical solution of a stochastic differential equation. It is named after Grigori N. Milstein who first published it in 1974.
In the stochastic calculus, Tanaka's formula for the Brownian motion states that
In mathematics — specifically, in stochastic analysis — Dynkin's formula is a theorem giving the expected value of any suitably smooth statistic of an Itō diffusion at a stopping time. It may be seen as a stochastic generalization of the (second) fundamental theorem of calculus. It is named after the Russian mathematician Eugene Dynkin.
In mathematics – specifically, in stochastic analysis – an Itô diffusion is a solution to a specific type of stochastic differential equation. That equation is similar to the Langevin equation used in physics to describe the Brownian motion of a particle subjected to a potential in a viscous fluid. Itô diffusions are named after the Japanese mathematician Kiyosi Itô.
In mathematics — specifically, in stochastic analysis — the Green measure is a measure associated to an Itō diffusion. There is an associated Green formula representing suitably smooth functions in terms of the Green measure and first exit times of the diffusion. The concepts are named after the British mathematician George Green and are generalizations of the classical Green's function and Green formula to the stochastic case using Dynkin's formula.
In mathematics — specifically, in stochastic analysis — the infinitesimal generator of a Feller process is a Fourier multiplier operator that encodes a great deal of information about the process.
In mathematics, some boundary value problems can be solved using the methods of stochastic analysis. Perhaps the most celebrated example is Shizuo Kakutani's 1944 solution of the Dirichlet problem for the Laplace operator using Brownian motion. However, it turns out that for a large class of semi-elliptic second-order partial differential equations the associated Dirichlet boundary value problem can be solved using an Itō process that solves an associated stochastic differential equation.
In the theory of stochastic processes, filtering describes the problem of determining the state of a system from an incomplete and potentially noisy set of observations. While originally motivated by problems in engineering, filtering found applications in many fields from signal processing to finance.
In mathematics, Hörmander's condition is a property of vector fields that, if satisfied, has many useful consequences in the theory of partial and stochastic differential equations. The condition is named after the Swedish mathematician Lars Hörmander.
In stochastic analysis, a rough path is a generalization of the notion of smooth path allowing to construct a robust solution theory for controlled differential equations driven by classically irregular signals, for example a Wiener process. The theory was developed in the 1990s by Terry Lyons. Several accounts of the theory are available.
In quantum probability, the Belavkin equation, also known as Belavkin-Schrödinger equation, quantum filtering equation, stochastic master equation, is a quantum stochastic differential equation describing the dynamics of a quantum system undergoing observation in continuous time. It was derived and henceforth studied by Viacheslav Belavkin in 1988.
The Engelbert–Schmidt zero–one law is a theorem that gives a mathematical criterion for an event associated with a continuous, non-decreasing additive functional of Brownian motion to have probability either 0 or 1, without the possibility of an intermediate value. This zero-one law is used in the study of questions of finiteness and asymptotic behavior for stochastic differential equations. This 0-1 law, published in 1981, is named after Hans-Jürgen Engelbert and the probabilist Wolfgang Schmidt.
The separation principle is one of the fundamental principles of stochastic control theory, which states that the problems of optimal control and state estimation can be decoupled under certain conditions. In its most basic formulation it deals with a linear stochastic system
In mathematics, stochastic analysis on manifolds or stochastic differential geometry is the study of stochastic analysis over smooth manifolds. It is therefore a synthesis of stochastic analysis and differential geometry.
