English

Energy of taut strings accompanying Wiener process

Probability 2019-07-04 v1

Abstract

Let WW be a Wiener process. The function h()h(\cdot) minmizing energy 0Th(t)2dt\int_0^T h'(t)^2\, dt among all functions satisfying W(t)rh(t)W(t)+rW(t)-r \le h(t) \le W(t)+ r on an interval [0,T][0,T] is called taut string. This is a classical object well known in Variational Calculus, Mathematical Statistics, etc. We show that the energy of this taut string on large intervals is equivalent to C2T/r2C^2 T\, /\, r^2 where CC is some finite positive constant. While the precise value of CC remains unknown, we give various theoretical bounds for it as well as rather precise results of computer simulation. While the taut string clearly depends on entire trajectory of WW, we also consider an adaptive version of the problem by giving a construction (Markovian pursuit) of a random function based only on the past values of WW and having minimal asymptotic energy. The solution, an optimal pursuit strategy, quite surprisingly turns out to be related with a classical minimization problem for Fisher information on the bounded interval.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1405.1651,
  title  = {Energy of taut strings accompanying Wiener process},
  author = {Mikhail Lifshits and Eric Setterqvist},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1405.1651},
  year   = {2019}
}