Poisson-type deviation inequalities for curved continuous-time Markov chains

In this paper, we present new Poisson-type deviation inequalities for continuous-time Markov chains whose Wasserstein curvature or $\Gamma$-curvature is bounded below. Although these two curvatures are equivalent for Brownian motion on Riemannian manifolds, they are not comparable in discrete settings and yield different deviation bounds. In the case of birth--death processes, we provide some conditions on the transition rates of the associated generator for such curvatures to be bounded below and we extend the deviation inequalities established [An\'{e}, C. and Ledoux, M. On logarithmic Sobolev inequalities for continuous time random walks on graphs. Probab. Theory Related Fields 116 (2000) 573--602] for continuous-time random walks, seen as models in null curvature. Some applications of these tail estimates are given for Brownian-driven Ornstein--Uhlenbeck processes and $M/M/1$ queues.Comment: Published at http://dx.doi.org/10.3150/07-BEJ6039 in the Bernoulli (http://isi.cbs.nl/bernoulli/) by the International Statistical Institute/Bernoulli Society (http://isi.cbs.nl/BS/bshome.htm

A new Poisson-type deviation inequality for Markov jump processes with positive Wasserstein curvature

The purpose of this paper is to extend the investigation of Poisson-type deviation inequalities started by Joulin (Bernoulli 13 (2007) 782--798) to the empirical mean of positively curved Markov jump processes. In particular, our main result generalizes the tail estimates given by Lezaud (Ann. Appl. Probab. 8 (1998) 849--867, ESAIM Probab. Statist. 5 (2001) 183--201). An application to birth--death processes completes this work.Comment: Published in at http://dx.doi.org/10.3150/08-BEJ158 the Bernoulli (http://isi.cbs.nl/bernoulli/) by the International Statistical Institute/Bernoulli Society (http://isi.cbs.nl/BS/bshome.htm

Intertwining and commutation relations for birth-death processes

Given a birth-death process on $\mathbb {N}$ with semigroup $(P_t)_{t\geq0}$ and a discrete gradient ${\partial}_u$ depending on a positive weight $u$, we establish intertwining relations of the form ${\partial}_uP_t=Q_t\,{\partial}_u$, where $(Q_t)_{t\geq0}$ is the Feynman-Kac semigroup with potential $V_u$ of another birth-death process. We provide applications when $V_u$ is nonnegative and uniformly bounded from below, including Lipschitz contraction and Wasserstein curvature, various functional inequalities, and stochastic orderings. Our analysis is naturally connected to the previous works of Caputo-Dai Pra-Posta and of Chen on birth-death processes. The proofs are remarkably simple and rely on interpolation, commutation, and convexity.Comment: Published in at http://dx.doi.org/10.3150/12-BEJ433 the Bernoulli (http://isi.cbs.nl/bernoulli/) by the International Statistical Institute/Bernoulli Society (http://isi.cbs.nl/BS/bshome.htm

Measure concentration through non-Lipschitz observables and functional inequalities

Non-Gaussian concentration estimates are obtained for invariant probability measures of reversible Markov processes. We show that the functional inequalities approach combined with a suitable Lyapunov condition allows us to circumvent the classical Lipschitz assumption of the observables. Our method is general and covers diffusions as well as pure-jump Markov processes on unbounded spaces

Curvature, concentration and error estimates for Markov chain Monte Carlo

We provide explicit nonasymptotic estimates for the rate of convergence of empirical means of Markov chains, together with a Gaussian or exponential control on the deviations of empirical means. These estimates hold under a "positive curvature" assumption expressing a kind of metric ergodicity, which generalizes the Ricci curvature from differential geometry and, on finite graphs, amounts to contraction under path coupling.Comment: Published in at http://dx.doi.org/10.1214/10-AOP541 the Annals of Probability (http://www.imstat.org/aop/) by the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (http://www.imstat.org

INTERTWININGS AND GENERALIZED BRASCAMP-LIEB INEQUALITIES

International audienceWe continue our investigation of the intertwining relations for Markov semigroups and extend the results of [9] to multi-dimensional diffusions. In particular these formulae entail new functional inequalities of Brascamp-Lieb type for log-concave distributions and beyond. Our results are illustrated by some classical and less classical examples

A note on spectral gap and weighted Poincar\'e inequalities for some one-dimensional diffusions

International audienceWe present some classical and weighted Poincar\'e inequalities for some one-dimensional probability measures. This work is the one-dimensional counterpart of a recent study achieved by the authors for a class of spherically symmetric probability measures in dimension larger than 2. Our strategy is based on two main ingredients: on the one hand, the optimal constant in the desired weighted Poincar\'e inequality has to be rewritten as the spectral gap of a convenient Markovian diffusion operator, and on the other hand we use a recent result given by the two first authors, which allows to estimate precisely this spectral gap. In particular we are able to capture its exact value for some examples

Upper bounds on Rubinstein distances on configuration spaces and applications

In this paper, we provide upper bounds on several Rubinstein-type distances on the configuration space equipped with the Poisson measure. Our inequalities involve the two well-known gradients, in the sense of Malliavin calculus, which can be defined on this space. Actually, we show that depending on the distance between configurations which is considered, it is one gradient or the other which is the most effective. Some applications to distance estimates between Poisson and other more sophisticated processes are also provided, and an application of our results to tail and isoperimetric estimates completes this work.Comment: To appear in Communications on Stochastic Analysis and Application