Paper 2, Section II, 24K24 K

Applied Probability
Part II, 2015

(i) Defne a Poisson process on R+\mathbb{R}_{+}with rate λ\lambda. Let NN and MM be two independent Poisson processes on R+\mathbb{R}_{+}of rates λ\lambda and μ\mu respectively. Prove that N+MN+M is also a Poisson process and find its rate.

(ii) Let XX be a discrete time Markov chain with transition matrix KK on the finite state space SS. Find the generator of the continuous time Markov chain Yt=XNtY_{t}=X_{N_{t}} in terms of KK and λ\lambda. Show that if π\pi is an invariant distribution for XX, then it is also invariant for YY.

Suppose that XX has an absorbing state aa. If τa\tau_{a} and TaT_{a} are the absorption times for XX and YY respectively, write an equation that relates Ex[τa]\mathbb{E}_{x}\left[\tau_{a}\right] and Ex[Ta]\mathbb{E}_{x}\left[T_{a}\right], where xSx \in S.

[Hint: You may want to prove that if ξ1,ξ2,\xi_{1}, \xi_{2}, \ldots are i.i.d. non-negative random variables with E[ξ1]<\mathbb{E}\left[\xi_{1}\right]<\infty and MM is an independent non-negative random variable, then E[i=1Mξi]=E[M]E[ξ1].]\left.\mathbb{E}\left[\sum_{i=1}^{M} \xi_{i}\right]=\mathbb{E}[M] \mathbb{E}\left[\xi_{1}\right] .\right]