Linear processes in high-dimension: phase space and critical properties

In this work we investigate the generic properties of a stochastic linear model in the regime of high-dimensionality. We consider in particular the Vector AutoRegressive model (VAR) and the multivariate Hawkes process. We analyze both deterministic and random versions of these models, showing the existence of a stable and an unstable phase. We find that along the transition region separating the two regimes, the correlations of the process decay slowly, and we characterize the conditions under which these slow correlations are expected to become power-laws. We check our findings with numerical simulations showing remarkable agreement with our predictions. We finally argue that real systems with a strong degree of self-interaction are naturally characterized by this type of slow relaxation of the correlations.Comment: 40 pages, 5 figure

Uncovering Causality from Multivariate Hawkes Integrated Cumulants

We design a new nonparametric method that allows one to estimate the matrix of integrated kernels of a multivariate Hawkes process. This matrix not only encodes the mutual influences of each nodes of the process, but also disentangles the causality relationships between them. Our approach is the first that leads to an estimation of this matrix without any parametric modeling and estimation of the kernels themselves. A consequence is that it can give an estimation of causality relationships between nodes (or users), based on their activity timestamps (on a social network for instance), without knowing or estimating the shape of the activities lifetime. For that purpose, we introduce a moment matching method that fits the third-order integrated cumulants of the process. We show on numerical experiments that our approach is indeed very robust to the shape of the kernels, and gives appealing results on the MemeTracker database