English

On Quasi-Infinitely Divisible Distributions with a Point Mass

Probability 2018-02-15 v1

Abstract

An infinitely divisible distribution on R\mathbb{R} is a probability measure μ\mu such that the characteristic function μ^\hat{\mu} has a L\'{e}vy-Khintchine representation with characteristic triplet (a,γ,ν)(a,\gamma, \nu), where ν\nu is a L\'{e}vy measure, γR\gamma\in\mathbb{R} and a0a\ge 0. A natural extension of such distributions are quasi-infinitely distributions. Instead of a L\'{e}vy measure, we assume that ν\nu is a "signed L\'{e}vy measure", for further information on the definition see [\ref{Lindner}]. We show that a distribution μ=pδx0+(1p)μac\mu=p\delta_{x_0}+(1-p)\mu_{ac} with p>0p>0 and x0Rx_0 \in \mathbb{R}, where μac\mu_{ac} is the absolutely continuous part, is quasi-infinitely divisible if and only if μ^(z)0\hat{\mu}(z)\neq0 for every zRz\in\mathbb{R}. We apply this to show that certain variance mixtures of mean zero normal distributions are quasi-infinitely divisible distributions, and we give an example of a quasi-infinitely divisible distribution that is not continuous but has infinite quasi-L\'{e}vy measure. Furthermore, it is shown that replacing the signed L\'{e}vy measure by a seemingly more general complex L\'{e}vy measure does not lead to new distributions. Last but not least it is proven that the class of quasi-infinitely divisible distributions is not open, but path-connected in the space of probability measures with the Prokhorov metric.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1802.05070,
  title  = {On Quasi-Infinitely Divisible Distributions with a Point Mass},
  author = {David Berger},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1802.05070},
  year   = {2018}
}
R2 v1 2026-06-23T00:22:11.048Z