In some cases, certain coherent structures can exist in stochastic dynamic systems almost in every particular realization of random parameters describing these systems. Dynamic localization in one-dimensional dynamic systems, vortexgenesis (vortex production) in hydrodynamic flows, and phenomenon of clustering of various fields in random media (i.e., appearance of small regions with enhanced content of the field against the nearly vanishing background of this field in the remaining portion of space) are examples of such structure formation. The general methodology presented in Volume 1 is used in Volume 2 Coherent Phenomena in Stochastic Dynamic Systems to expound the theory of these phenomena in some specific fields of stochastic science, among which are hydrodynamics, magnetohydrodynamics, acoustics, optics, and radiophysics. The material of this volume includes particle and field clustering in the cases of scalar (density field) and vector (magnetic field) passive tracers in a random velocity field, dynamic localization of plane waves in layered random media, as well as monochromatic wave propagation and caustic structure formation in random media in terms of the scalar parabolic equation.

The dynamics of population systems cannot be understood within the framework of ordinary differential equations, which assume that the number of interacting agents is infinite. With recent advances in ecology, biochemistry and genetics it is becoming increasingly clear that real systems are in fact subject to a great deal of noise. Relevant examples include social insects competing for resources, molecules undergoing chemical reactions in a cell and a pool of genomes subject to evolution. When the population size is small, novel macroscopic phenomena can arise, which can be analyzed using the theory of stochastic processes. This thesis is centered on two unsolved problems in population dynamics: the symmetry breaking observed in foraging populations and the robustness of spatial patterns. We argue that these problems can be resolved with the help of two novel concepts: noise-induced bistable states and stochastic patterns.

This book collects significant contributions from the fifth conference on Fractal Geometry and Stochastics held in Tabarz, Germany, in March 2014. The book is divided into five topical sections: geometric measure theory, self-similar fractals and recurrent structures, analysis and algebra on fractals, multifractal theory, and random constructions. Each part starts with a state-of-the-art survey followed by papers covering a specific aspect of the topic. The authors are leading world experts and present their topics comprehensibly and attractively. Both newcomers and specialists in the field will benefit from this book.

Considering Poisson random measures as the driving sources for stochastic (partial) differential equations allows us to incorporate jumps and to model sudden, unexpected phenomena. By using such equations the present book introduces a new method for modeling the states of complex systems perturbed by random sources over time, such as interest rates in financial markets or temperature distributions in a specific region. It studies properties of the solutions of the stochastic equations, observing the long-term behavior and the sensitivity of the solutions to changes in the initial data. The authors consider an integration theory of measurable and adapted processes in appropriate Banach spaces as well as the non-Gaussian case, whereas most of the literature only focuses on predictable settings in Hilbert spaces. The book is intended for graduate students and researchers in stochastic (partial) differential equations, mathematical finance and non-linear filtering and assumes a knowledge of the required integration theory, existence and uniqueness results and stability theory. The results will be of particular interest to natural scientists and the finance community. Readers should ideally be familiar with stochastic processes and probability theory in general, as well as functional analysis and in particular the theory of operator semigroups.

This volume highlights the main results of the research performed within the network "Harmonic and Complex Analysis and its Applications" (HCAA), which was a five-year (2007-2012) European Science Foundation Programme intended to explore and to strengthen the bridge between two scientific communities: analysts with broad backgrounds in complex and harmonic analysis and mathematical physics, and specialists in physics and applied sciences. It coordinated actions for advancing harmonic and complex analysis and for expanding its application to challenging scientific problems. Particular topics considered by this Programme included conformal and quasiconformal mappings, potential theory, Banach spaces of analytic functions and their applications to the problems of fluid mechanics, conformal field theory, Hamiltonian and Lagrangian mechanics, and signal processing. This book is a collection of surveys written as a result of activities of the Programme and will be interesting and useful for professionals and novices in analysis and mathematical physics, as well as for graduate students. Browsing the volume, the reader will undoubtedly notice that, as the scope of the Programme is rather broad, there are many interrelations between the various contributions, which can be regarded as different facets of a common theme.

This book provides a comprehensive and unified introduction to stochastic differential equations and related optimal control problems. The material is new and the presentation is reader-friendly. A major contribution of the book is the development of generalized Malliavin calculus in the framework of white noise analysis, based on chaos expansion representation of stochastic processes and its application for solving several classes of stochastic differential equations with singular data involving the main operators of Malliavin calculus. In addition, applications in optimal control and numerical approximations are discussed. The book is divided into four chapters. The first, entitled White Noise Analysis and Chaos Expansions, includes notation and provides the reader with the theoretical background needed to understand the subsequent chapters. In Chapter 2, Generalized Operators of Malliavin Calculus, the Malliavin derivative operator, the Skorokhod integral and the Ornstein-Uhlenbeck operator are introduced in terms of chaos expansions. The main properties of the operators, which are known in the literature for the square integrable processes, are proven using the chaos expansion approach and extended for generalized and test stochastic processes. Chapter 3, Equations involving Malliavin Calculus operators, is devoted to the study of several types of stochastic differential equations that involve the operators of Malliavin calculus, introduced in the previous chapter. Fractional versions of these operators are also discussed. Finally, in Chapter 4, Applications and Numerical Approximations are discussed. Specifically, we consider the stochastic linear quadratic optimal control problem with different forms of noise disturbances, operator differential algebraic equations arising in fluid dynamics, stationary equations and fractional versions of the equations studied - applications never covered in the extant literature. Moreover, numerical validations of the method are provided for specific problems."

This book provides a comprehensive introduction to the theory of stochastic calculus and some of its applications. It is the only textbook on the subject to include more than two hundred exercises with complete solutions. After explaining the basic elements of probability, the author introduces more advanced topics such as Brownian motion, martingales and Markov processes. The core of the book covers stochastic calculus, including stochastic differential equations, the relationship to partial differential equations, numerical methods and simulation, as well as applications of stochastic processes to finance. The final chapter provides detailed solutions to all exercises, in some cases presenting various solution techniques together with a discussion of advantages and drawbacks of the methods used. Stochastic Calculus will be particularly useful to advanced undergraduate and graduate students wishing to acquire a solid understanding of the subject through the theory and exercises. Including full mathematical statements and rigorous proofs, this book is completely self-contained and suitable for lecture courses as well as self-study.

The mathematical theory of stochastic dynamics has become an important tool in the modeling of uncertainty in many complex biological, physical, and chemical systems and in engineering applications - for example, gene regulation systems, neuronal networks, geophysical flows, climate dynamics, chemical reaction systems, nanocomposites, and communication systems. It is now understood that these systems are often subject to random influences, which can significantly impact their evolution. This book serves as a concise introductory text on stochastic dynamics for applied mathematicians and scientists. Starting from the knowledge base typical for beginning graduate students in applied mathematics, it introduces the basic tools from probability and analysis and then develops for stochastic systems the properties traditionally calculated for deterministic systems. The book's final chapter opens the door to modeling in non-Gaussian situations, typical of many real-world applications. Rich with examples, illustrations, and exercises with solutions, this book is also ideal for self-study.

The mathematical theory of stochastic dynamics has become an important tool in the modeling of uncertainty in many complex biological, physical, and chemical systems and in engineering applications - for example, gene regulation systems, neuronal networks, geophysical flows, climate dynamics, chemical reaction systems, nanocomposites, and communication systems. It is now understood that these systems are often subject to random influences, which can significantly impact their evolution. This book serves as a concise introductory text on stochastic dynamics for applied mathematicians and scientists. Starting from the knowledge base typical for beginning graduate students in applied mathematics, it introduces the basic tools from probability and analysis and then develops for stochastic systems the properties traditionally calculated for deterministic systems. The book's final chapter opens the door to modeling in non-Gaussian situations, typical of many real-world applications. Rich with examples, illustrations, and exercises with solutions, this book is also ideal for self-study.

The classical probability theory initiated by Kolmogorov and its quantum counterpart, pioneered by von Neumann, were created at about the same time in the 1930s, but development of the quantum theory has trailed far behind. Although highly appealing, the quantum theory has a steep learning curve, requiring tools from both probability and analysis and a facility for combining the two viewpoints. This book is a systematic, self-contained account of the core of quantum probability and quantum stochastic processes for graduate students and researchers. The only assumed background is knowledge of the basic theory of Hilbert spaces, bounded linear operators, and classical Markov processes. From there, the book introduces additional tools from analysis, and then builds the quantum probability framework needed to support applications to quantum control and quantum information and communication. These include quantum noise, quantum stochastic calculus, stochastic quantum differential equations, quantum Markov semigroups and processes, and large-time asymptotic behavior of quantum Markov semigroups.

An extension problem (often called a boundary problem) of Markov processes has been studied, particularly in the case of one-dimensional diffusion processes, by W. Feller, K. Ito, and H. P. McKean, among others. In this book, Ito discussed a case of a general Markov process with state space S and a specified point a S called a boundary. The problem is to obtain all possible recurrent extensions of a given minimal process (i.e., the process on S \ {a} which is absorbed on reaching the boundary a). The study in this lecture is restricted to a simpler case of the boundary a being a discontinuous entrance point, leaving a more general case of a continuous entrance point to future works. He established a one-to-one correspondence between a recurrent extension and a pair of a positive measure k(db) on S \ {a} (called the jumping-in measure and a non-negative number m< (called the stagnancy rate). The necessary and sufficient conditions for a pair k, m was obtained so that the correspondence is precisely described. For this, Ito used, as a fundamental tool, the notion of Poisson point processes formed of all excursions of the process on S \ {a}. This theory of Ito's of Poisson point processes of excursions is indeed a breakthrough. It has been expanded and applied to more general extension problems by many succeeding researchers. Thus we may say that this lecture note by Ito is really a memorial work in the extension problems of Markov processes. Especially in Chapter 1 of this note, a general theory of Poisson point processes is given that reminds us of Ito's beautiful and impressive lectures in his day.

This book, which is based on several courses of lectures given by the author at the Independent University of Moscow, is devoted to Sobolev-type spaces and boundary value problems for linear elliptic partial differential equations. Its main focus is on problems in non-smooth (Lipschitz) domains for strongly elliptic systems. The author, who is a prominent expert in the theory of linear partial differential equations, spectral theory and pseudodifferential operators, has included his own very recent findings in the present book. The book is well suited as a modern graduate textbook, utilizing a thorough and clear format that strikes a good balance between the choice of material and the style of exposition. It can be used both as an introduction to recent advances in elliptic equations and boundary value problems and as a valuable survey and reference work. It also includes a good deal of new and extremely useful material not available in standard textbooks to date. Graduate and post-graduate students, as well as specialists working in the fields of partial differential equations, functional analysis, operator theory and mathematical physics will find this book particularly valuable.

The book develops modern methods and in particular the "generic chaining" to bound stochastic processes. This methods allows in particular to get optimal bounds for Gaussian and Bernoulli processes. Applications are given to stable processes, infinitely divisible processes, matching theorems, the convergence of random Fourier series, of orthogonal series, and to functional analysis. The complete solution of a number of classical problems is given in complete detail, and an ambitious program for future research is laid out.

This book gives a comprehensive introduction to numerical methods and analysis of stochastic processes, random fields and stochastic differential equations, and offers graduate students and researchers powerful tools for understanding uncertainty quantification for risk analysis. Coverage includes traditional stochastic ODEs with white noise forcing, strong and weak approximation, and the multi-level Monte Carlo method. Later chapters apply the theory of random fields to the numerical solution of elliptic PDEs with correlated random data, discuss the Monte Carlo method, and introduce stochastic Galerkin finite-element methods. Finally, stochastic parabolic PDEs are developed. Assuming little previous exposure to probability and statistics, theory is developed in tandem with state-of-the-art computational methods through worked examples, exercises, theorems and proofs. The set of MATLAB (R) codes included (and downloadable) allows readers to perform computations themselves and solve the test problems discussed. Practical examples are drawn from finance, mathematical biology, neuroscience, fluid flow modelling and materials science.

Focusing on stochastic porous media equations, this book places an emphasis on existence theorems, asymptotic behavior and ergodic properties of the associated transition semigroup. Stochastic perturbations of the porous media equation have reviously been considered by physicists, but rigorous mathematical existence results have only recently been found. The porous media equation models a number of different physical phenomena, including the flow of an ideal gas and the diffusion of a compressible fluid through porous media, and also thermal propagation in plasma and plasma radiation. Another important application is to a model of the standard self-organized criticality process, called the "sand-pile model" or the "Bak-Tang-Wiesenfeld model". The book will be of interest to PhD students and researchers in mathematics, physics and biology.

Now in its second edition, this book gives a systematic and self-contained presentation of basic results on stochastic evolution equations in infinite dimensional, typically Hilbert and Banach, spaces. In the first part the authors give a self-contained exposition of the basic properties of probability measure on separable Banach and Hilbert spaces, as required later; they assume a reasonable background in probability theory and finite dimensional stochastic processes. The second part is devoted to the existence and uniqueness of solutions of a general stochastic evolution equation, and the third concerns the qualitative properties of those solutions. Appendices gather together background results from analysis that are otherwise hard to find under one roof. This revised edition includes two brand new chapters surveying recent developments in the area and an even more comprehensive bibliography, making this book an essential and up-to-date resource for all those working in stochastic differential equations.

Focusing on what actuaries need in practice, this introductory account provides readers with essential tools for handling complex problems and explains how simulation models can be created, used and re-used (with modifications) in related situations. The book begins by outlining the basic tools of modelling and simulation, including a discussion of the Monte Carlo method and its use. Part II deals with general insurance and Part III with life insurance and financial risk. Algorithms that can be implemented on any programming platform are spread throughout and a program library written in R is included. Numerous figures and experiments with R-code illustrate the text. The author's non-technical approach is ideal for graduate students, the only prerequisites being introductory courses in calculus and linear algebra, probability and statistics. The book will also be of value to actuaries and other analysts in the industry looking to update their skills.

Communication networks underpin our modern world, and provide fascinating and challenging examples of large-scale stochastic systems. Randomness arises in communication systems at many levels: for example, the initiation and termination times of calls in a telephone network, or the statistical structure of the arrival streams of packets at routers in the Internet. How can routing, flow control and connection acceptance algorithms be designed to work well in uncertain and random environments? This compact introduction illustrates how stochastic models can be used to shed light on important issues in the design and control of communication networks. It will appeal to readers with a mathematical background wishing to understand this important area of application, and to those with an engineering background who want to grasp the underlying mathematical theory. Each chapter ends with exercises and suggestions for further reading.

Three coherent parts form the material covered in this text, portions of which have not been widely covered in traditional textbooks. In this coverage the reader is quickly introduced to several different topics enriched with 175 exercises which focus on real-world problems. Exercises range from the classics of probability theory to more exotic research-oriented problems based on numerical simulations. Intended for graduate students in mathematics and applied sciences, the text provides the tools and training needed to write and use programs for research purposes. The first part of the text begins with a brief review of measure theory and revisits the main concepts of probability theory, from random variables to the standard limit theorems. The second part covers traditional material on stochastic processes, including martingales, discrete-time Markov chains, Poisson processes, and continuous-time Markov chains. The theory developed is illustrated by a variety of examples surrounding applications such as the gambler's ruin chain, branching processes, symmetric random walks, and queueing systems. The third, more research-oriented part of the text, discusses special stochastic processes of interest in physics, biology, and sociology. Additional emphasis is placed on minimal models that have been used historically to develop new mathematical techniques in the field of stochastic processes: the logistic growth process, the Wright -Fisher model, Kingman's coalescent, percolation models, the contact process, and the voter model. Further treatment of the material explains how these special processes are connected to each other from a modeling perspective as well as their simulation capabilities in C and Matlab (TM).

Stochastic scheduling is in the area of production scheduling. There is a dearth of work that analyzes the variability of schedules. In a stochastic environment, in which the processing time of a job is not known with certainty, a schedule is typically analyzed based on the expected value of a performance measure. This book addresses this problem and presents algorithms to determine the variability of a schedule under various machine configurations and objective functions. It is intended for graduate and advanced undergraduate students in manufacturing, operations management, applied mathematics, and computer science, and it is also a good reference book for practitioners. Computer software containing the algorithms is provided on an accompanying website for ease of student and user implementation.

A unified methodology for categorizing various complex objects is presented in this book. Through probability theory, novel asymptotically minimax criteria suitable for practical applications in imaging and data analysis are examined including the special cases such as the Jensen-Shannon divergence and the probabilistic neural network. An optimal approximate nearest neighbor search algorithm, which allows faster classification of databases is featured. Rough set theory, sequential analysis and granular computing are used to improve performance of the hierarchical classifiers. Practical examples in face identification (including deep neural networks), isolated commands recognition in voice control system and classification of visemes captured by the Kinect depth camera are included. This approach creates fast and accurate search procedures by using exact probability densities of applied dissimilarity measures. This book can be used as a guide for independent study and as supplementary material for a technically oriented graduate course in intelligent systems and data mining. Students and researchers interested in the theoretical and practical aspects of intelligent classification systems will find answers to: - Why conventional implementation of the naive Bayesian approach does not work well in image classification? - How to deal with insufficient performance of hierarchical classification systems? - Is it possible to prevent an exhaustive search of the nearest neighbor in a database?

Direct and to the point, this book from one of the field's leaders covers Brownian motion and stochastic calculus at the graduate level, and illustrates the use of that theory in various application domains, emphasizing business and economics. The mathematical development is narrowly focused and briskly paced, with many concrete calculations and a minimum of abstract notation. The applications discussed include: the role of reflected Brownian motion as a storage model, queueing model, or inventory model; optimal stopping problems for Brownian motion, including the influential McDonald-Siegel investment model; optimal control of Brownian motion via barrier policies, including optimal control of Brownian storage systems; and Brownian models of dynamic inference, also called Brownian learning models, or Brownian filtering models.

Complexity science is the study of systems with many interdependent components. Such systems - and the self-organization and emergent phenomena they manifest - lie at the heart of many challenges of global importance. This book is a coherent introduction to the mathematical methods used to understand complexity, with plenty of examples and real-world applications. It starts with the crucial concepts of self-organization and emergence, then tackles complexity in dynamical systems using differential equations and chaos theory. Several classes of models of interacting particle systems are studied with techniques from stochastic analysis, followed by a treatment of the statistical mechanics of complex systems. Further topics include numerical analysis of PDEs, and applications of stochastic methods in economics and finance. The book concludes with introductions to space-time phases and selfish routing. The exposition is suitable for researchers, practitioners and students in complexity science and related fields at advanced undergraduate level and above.

This book studies some of the groundbreaking advances that have been made regarding analytic capacity and its relationship to rectifiability in the decade 1995-2005. The Cauchy transform plays a fundamental role in this area and is accordingly one of the main subjects covered. Another important topic, which may be of independent interest for many analysts, is the so-called non-homogeneous Calderon-Zygmund theory, the development of which has been largely motivated by the problems arising in connection with analytic capacity. The Painleve problem, which was first posed around 1900, consists in finding a description of the removable singularities for bounded analytic functions in metric and geometric terms. Analytic capacity is a key tool in the study of this problem. In the 1960s Vitushkin conjectured that the removable sets which have finite length coincide with those which are purely unrectifiable. Moreover, because of the applications to the theory of uniform rational approximation, he posed the question as to whether analytic capacity is semiadditive. This work presents full proofs of Vitushkin's conjecture and of the semiadditivity of analytic capacity, both of which remained open problems until very recently. Other related questions are also discussed, such as the relationship between rectifiability and the existence of principal values for the Cauchy transforms and other singular integrals. The book is largely self-contained and should be accessible for graduate students in analysis, as well as a valuable resource for researchers.

Optimal Control and Optimization of Stochastic Supply Chain Systems examines its subject the context of the presence of a variety of uncertainties. Numerous examples with intuitive illustrations and tables are provided, to demonstrate the structural characteristics of the optimal control policies in various stochastic supply chains and to show how to make use of these characteristics to construct easy-to-operate sub-optimal policies. In Part I, a general introduction to stochastic supply chain systems is provided. Analytical models for various stochastic supply chain systems are formulated and analysed in Part II. In Part III the structural knowledge of the optimal control policies obtained in Part II is utilized to construct easy-to-operate sub-optimal control policies for various stochastic supply chain systems accordingly. Finally, Part IV discusses the optimisation of threshold-type control policies and their robustness. A key feature of the book is its tying together of the complex analytical models produced by the requirements of operational practice, and the simple solutions needed for implementation. The analytical models and theoretical analysis propounded in this monograph will be of benefit to academic researchers and graduate students looking at logistics and supply chain management from standpoints in operations research or industrial, manufacturing, or control engineering. The practical tools and solutions and the qualitative insights into the ideas underlying functional supply chain systems will be of similar use to readers from more industrially-based backgrounds.