This book adresses the needs of both researchers and practitioners. It combines a rigorous overview of the mathematics of financial markets with an insight into the practical application of these models to the risk and portfolio management of interest-rate derivatives. It can also serve as a valuable textbook for graduate and PhD students in mathematics who want to get some knowledge about financial markets. The first part of the book is an exposition of advanced stochastic calculus. It defines the theoretical framework for the pricing and hedging of contingent claims with a special focus on interest-rate markets. The second part covers a selection of short and long-term oriented risk measures as well as their application to the risk management of interest -rate portfolios. Interesting and comprehensive case studies are provided to illustrate the theoretical concepts.

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.

This monograph is intended to be a complete treatment of the metrical the ory of the (regular) continued fraction expansion and related representations of real numbers. We have attempted to give the best possible results known so far, with proofs which are the simplest and most direct. The book has had a long gestation period because we first decided to write it in March 1994. This gave us the possibility of essentially improving the initial versions of many parts of it. Even if the two authors are different in style and approach, every effort has been made to hide the differences. Let 0 denote the set of irrationals in I = [0,1]. Define the (reg ular) continued fraction transformation T by T (w) = fractional part of n 1/w, w E O. Write T for the nth iterate of T, n E N = {O, 1, ... }, n 1 with TO = identity map. The positive integers an(w) = al(T - (W)), n E N+ = {1,2*** }, where al(w) = integer part of 1/w, w E 0, are called the (regular continued fraction) digits of w. Writing . for arbitrary indeterminates Xi, 1 :::; i :::; n, we have w = lim [al(w),*** , an(w)], w E 0, n--->oo thus explaining the name of T. The above equation will be also written as w = lim [al(w), a2(w),***], w E O.

Dedicated to the Russian mathematician Albert Shiryaev on his 70th birthday, this is a collection of papers written by his former students, co-authors and colleagues. The book represents the modern state of art of a quickly maturing theory and will be an essential source and reading for researchers in this area. Diversity of topics and comprehensive style of the papers make the book attractive for PhD students and young researchers.

Stochastic differential equations (SDEs) are a powerful tool in science, mathematics, economics and finance. This book will help the reader to master the basic theory and learn some applications of SDEs. In particular, the reader will be provided with the backward SDE technique for use in research when considering financial problems in the market, and with the reflecting SDE technique to enable study of optimal stochastic population control problems. These two techniques are powerful and efficient, and can also be applied to research in many other problems in nature, science and elsewhere.

Stochastic switching systems represent an interesting class of systems that can be used to model a variety of systems having abrupt random changes in their dynamics. Such systems may be found in the fields of manufacturing, communications, aerospace, power, and economics. This work presents stochastic switching systems and provides up-to-date methods and techniques for the analysis and design of various control systems with or without uncertainties. An introductory chapter highlights basic concepts and practical models, which are then used to solve more advanced problems throughout the book. Included are many numerical examples as well as LMI analysis methods and design approaches to supplement the developed results. Stochastic Switching Systems may be used as a supplementary textbook for graduate-level engineering courses, or as a reference for control engineers, graduate students, and researchers in systems and control. Prerequisites include elementary courses in matrix theory, probability, optimization techniques, and control systems theory.

The theory of stochastic processes, for science and engineering, can be considered as an extension of probability theory allowing modeling of the evolution of systems over time. The modern theory of Markov processes has its origins in the studies of A.A. Markov (1856-1922) on sequences of experiments "connected in a chain" and in the attempts to describe mathematically the physical phenomenon Brownian motion. The theory of stochastic processes entered in a period of intensive development when the idea of Markov property was brought in. This book is a modern overall view of semi-Markov processes and its applications in reliability. It is accessible to readers with a first course in Probability theory (including the basic notions of Markov chain). The text contains many examples which aid in the understanding of the theoretical notions and shows how to apply them to concrete physical situations including algorithmic simulations. Many examples of the concrete applications in reliability are given. Features: * Processes associated to semi-Markov kernel for general and discrete state spaces * Asymptotic theory of processes and of additive functionals * Statistical estimation of semi-Markov kernel and of reliability function * Monte Carlo simulation * Applications in reliability and maintenance The book is a valuable resource for understanding the latest developments in Semi-Markov Processes and reliability. Practitioners, researchers and professionals in applied mathematics, control and engineering who work in areas of reliability, lifetime data analysis, statistics, probability, and engineering will find this book an up-to-date overview of the field.

This book compiles and critically discusses modern engineering system degradation models and their impact on engineering decisions. In particular, the authors focus on modeling the uncertain nature of degradation considering both conceptual discussions and formal mathematical formulations. It also describes the basics concepts and the various modeling aspects of life-cycle analysis (LCA). It highlights the role of degradation in LCA and defines optimum design and operation parameters. Given the relationship between operational decisions and the performance of the system's condition over time, maintenance models are also discussed. The concepts and models presented have applications in a large variety of engineering fields such as Civil, Environmental, Industrial, Electrical and Mechanical engineering. However, special emphasis is given to problems related to large infrastructure systems. The book is intended to be used both as a reference resource for researchers and practitioners and as an academic text for courses related to risk and reliability, infrastructure performance modeling and life-cycle assessment.

The discipline of Stochastic Processes is usually treated as a branch of mathematics, and there are plenty of books for mathematicians on the subject. Equally, there are very many books, both for statisticians and environmental scientists, on "Time Series Analysis," analysing the structure of data sequences where measurements are made at equal time-intervals and are free from "intermittent" behaviour. But this book deals with the analysis of events which occur intermittently in time and space; through a very wide range of examples drawn from many areas of environmental science in which the role of water is central, the book shows how the same analytical procedures can be applied to very many different problems. The books many examples include: analysis of time intervals between el NiAo events, frequency of dry spells, the relation between heavy rainfall and flooding, occurrences of gravel disturbance in upland trout streams which damages trout spawn deposits and the cellular structure of rainfall. The book does not aim to be an exhaustive treatment of all possible applications of stochastic process models in the environmental sciences, but should be regarded as a source book. Its aim is to encourage students and research workers to see how environmental problems can be put into a probabilistic framework, and to draw their attention to analogous problems and solutions in other fields of environmental science in which water, and the transport of material by water, is an essential characteristic.

From the Reviews:

"Gihman and Skorohod have done an excellent job of presenting the theory in its present state of rich imperfection."
D.W. Stroock in Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society, 1980

"To call this work encyclopedic would not give an accurate picture of its content and style. Some parts read like a textbook, but others are more technical and contain relatively new results. ... The exposition is robust and explicit, as one has come to expect of the Russian tradition of mathematical writing. The set when completed will be an invaluable source of information and reference in this ever-expanding field"
K.L. Chung in American Scientist, 1977

"The dominant impression is of the authors' mastery of their material, and of their confident insight into its underlying structure. ..."
J.F.C. Kingman in Bulletin of the London Mathematical Society, 1977

This book contains the lectures given at the Conference on Dynamics and Randomness held at the Centro de Modelamiento Matematico of the Universidad de Chile from December 11th to 15th, 2000. This meeting brought together mathematicians, theoretical physicists and theoretical computer scientists, and graduate students interested in fields re lated to probability theory, ergodic theory, symbolic and topological dynam ics. We would like to express our gratitude to all the participants of the con ference and to the people who contributed to its organization. In particular, to Pierre Collet, Bernard Host and Mike Keane for their scientific advise. VVe want to thank especially the authors of each chapter for their well prepared manuscripts and the stimulating conferences they gave at Santiago. We are also indebted to our sponsors and supporting institutions, whose interest and help was essential to organize this meeting: ECOS-CONICYT, FONDAP Program in Applied Mathematics, French Cooperation, Fundacion Andes, Presidential Fellowship and Universidad de Chile. We are grateful to Ms. Gladys Cavallone for their excellent work during the preparation of the meeting as well as for the considerable task of unifying the typography of the different chapters of this book."

Stochastic discrete-event systems (SDES) capture the randomness in choices due to activity delays and the probabilities of decisions.

This book delivers a comprehensive overview on modeling with a quantitative evaluation of SDES. It presents an abstract model class for SDES as a pivotal unifying result and details important model classes. The book also includes nontrivial examples to explain real-world applications of SDES.

Featuring the clearly presented and expertly-refereed contributions of leading researchers in the field of approximation theory, this volume is a collection of the best contributions at the Third International Conference on Applied Mathematics and Approximation Theory, an international conference held at TOBB University of Economics and Technology in Ankara, Turkey, on May 28-31, 2015. The goal of the conference, and this volume, is to bring together key work from researchers in all areas of approximation theory, covering topics such as ODEs, PDEs, difference equations, applied analysis, computational analysis, signal theory, positive operators, statistical approximation, fuzzy approximation, fractional analysis, semigroups, inequalities, special functions and summability. These topics are presented both within their traditional context of approximation theory, while also focusing on their connections to applied mathematics. As a result, this collection will be an invaluable resource for researchers in applied mathematics, engineering and statistics.

This accessible introduction to the theory of stochastic processes emphasizes Levy processes and Markov processes. It gives a thorough treatment of the decomposition of paths of processes with independent increments (the Levy-Ito decomposition). It also contains a detailed treatment of time-homogeneous Markov processes from the viewpoint of probability measures on path space. In addition, 70 exercises and their complete solutions are included."

Interactive Particle Systems is a branch of Probability Theory with close connections to Mathematical Physics and Mathematical Biology. In 1985, the author wrote a book (T. Liggett, Interacting Particle System, ISBN 3-540-96069) that treated the subject as it was at that time. The present book takes three of the most important models in the area, and traces advances in our understanding of them since 1985. In so doing, many of the most useful techniques in the field are explained and developed, so that they can be applied to other models and in other contexts. Extensive Notes and References sections discuss other work on these and related models. Readers are expected to be familiar with analysis and probability at the graduate level, but it is not assumed that they have mastered the material in the 1985 book. This book is intended for graduate students and researchers in Probability Theory, and in related areas of Mathematics, Biology and Physics.

Devoted to a systematic exposition of some recent developments in the theory of discrete-time Markov control processes, the text is mainly confined to MCPs with Borel state and control spaces. Although the book follows on from the author's earlier work, an important feature of this volume is that it is self-contained and can thus be read independently of the first.
The control model studied is sufficiently general to include virtually all the usual discrete-time stochastic control models that appear in applications to engineering, economics, mathematical population processes, operations research, and management science.

Stochastic Analysis aims to provide mathematical tools to describe and model high dimensional random systems. Such tools arise in the study of Stochastic Differential Equations and Stochastic Partial Differential Equations, Infinite Dimensional Stochastic Geometry, Random Media and Interacting Particle Systems, Super-processes, Stochastic Filtering, Mathematical Finance, etc. Stochastic Analysis has emerged as a core area of late 20th century Mathematics and is currently undergoing a rapid scientific development. The special volume "Stochastic Analysis 2010" provides a sample of the current research in the different branches of the subject. It includes the collected works of the participants at the Stochastic Analysis section of the 7th ISAAC Congress organized at Imperial College London in July 2009.

This book covers the broad range of research in stochastic models and optimization. Applications covered include networks, financial engineering, production planning and supply chain management. Each contribution is aimed at graduate students working in operations research, probability, and statistics.

This book provides a concise introduction to stochastic calculus with some of its applications in mathematical finance, engineering and the sciences. Applications in finance include pricing of financial derivatives, such as options on stocks, exotic options and interest rate options. The filtering problem and its solution is presented as an application in engineering. Population models and randomly perturbed equations of physics are given as examples of applications in biology and physics.

Only a basic knowledge of calculus and probability is required for reading the book. The text takes the reader from a fairly low technical level to a sophisticated one gradually. Heuristic arguments are often given before precise results are stated, and many ideas are illustrated by worked-out examples. Exercises are provided at the end of chapters to help to test readers' understanding. This book is suitable for advanced undergraduate students, graduate students as well as research workers and practitioners.

The aim of this book is to present graduate students with a thorough survey of reference probability models and their applications to optimal estimation and control. These new and powerful methods are particularly useful in signal processing applications where signal models are only partially known and are in noisy environments. Well-known results, including Kalman filters and the Wonheim filter emerge as special cases. The authors begin with discrete time and discrete state spaces. From there, they proceed to cover continuous time, and progress from linear models to non-linear models, and from completely known models to only partially known models. Readers are assumed to have basic grounding in probability and systems theory as might be gained from the first year of graduate study, but otherwise this account is self-contained. Throughout, the authors have taken care to demonstrate engineering applications which show the usefulness of these methods.

In the mathematical treatment of many problems which arise in physics, economics, engineering, management, etc., the researcher frequently faces two major difficulties: infinite dimensionality and randomness of the evolution process. Infinite dimensionality occurs when the evolution in time of a process is accompanied by a space-like dependence; for example, spatial distribution of the temperature for a heat-conductor, spatial dependence of the time-varying displacement of a membrane subject to external forces, etc. Randomness is intrinsic to the mathematical formulation of many phenomena, such as fluctuation in the stock market, or noise in communication networks. Control theory of distributed parameter systems and stochastic systems focuses on physical phenomena which are governed by partial differential equations, delay-differential equations, integral differential equations, etc., and stochastic differential equations of various types. This has been a fertile field of research with over 40 years of history, which continues to be very active under the thrust of new emerging applications. Among the subjects covered are: Control of distributed parameter systems; Stochastic control; Applications in finance/insurance/manufacturing; Adapted control; Numerical approximation . It is essential reading for applied mathematicians, control theorists, economic/financial analysts and engineers.

A beautiful interplay between probability theory (Markov processes, martingale theory) on the one hand and operator and spectral theory on the other yields a uniform treatment of several kinds of Hamiltonians such as the Laplace operator, relativistic Hamiltonian, Laplace-Beltrami operator, and generators of Ornstein-Uhlenbeck processes. For such operators regular and singular perturbations of order zero and their spectral properties are investigated.
A complete treatment of the Feynman-Kac formula is given. The theory is applied to such topics as compactness or trace class properties of differences of Feynman-Kac semigroups, preservation of absolutely continuous and/or essential spectra and completeness of scattering systems.
The unified approach provides a new viewpoint of and a deeper insight into the subject. The book is aimed at advanced students and researchers in mathematical physics and mathematics with an interest in quantum physics, scattering theory, heat equation, operator theory, probability theory and spectral theory.

Over the past decades, although stochastic system control has been studied intensively within the field of control engineering, all the modelling and control strategies developed so far have concentrated on the performance of one or two output properties of the system. such as minimum variance control and mean value control. The general assumption used in the formulation of modelling and control strategies is that the distribution of the random signals involved is Gaussian. In this book, a set of new approaches for the control of the output probability density function of stochastic dynamic systems (those subjected to any bounded random inputs), has been developed. In this context, the purpose of control system design becomes the selection of a control signal that makes the shape of the system outputs p.d.f. as close as possible to a given distribution. The book contains material on the subjects of: - Control of single-input single-output and multiple-input multiple-output stochastic systems; - Stable adaptive control of stochastic distributions; - Model reference adaptive control; - Control of nonlinear dynamic stochastic systems; - Condition monitoring of bounded stochastic distributions; - Control algorithm design; - Singular stochastic systems.
A new representation of dynamic stochastic systems is produced by using B-spline functions to descripe the output p.d.f. Advances in Industrial Control aims to report and encourage the transfer of technology in control engineering. The rapid development of control technology has an impact on all areas of the control discipline. The series offers an opportunity for researchers to present an extended exposition of new work in all aspects of industrial control.

This book presents important recent developments in mathematical and computational methods used in impedance imaging and the theory of composite materials. By augmenting the theory with interesting practical examples and numerical illustrations, the exposition brings simplicity to the advanced material. An introductory chapter covers the necessary basics. An extensive bibliography and open problems at the end of each chapter enhance the text.

In the past decade there has been an extemely rapid growth in the interest and development of quantum group theory.This book provides students and researchers with a practical introduction to the principal ideas of quantum groups theory and its applications to quantum mechanical and modern field theory problems. It begins with a review of, and introduction to, the mathematical aspects of quantum deformation of classical groups, Lie algebras and related objects (algebras of functions on spaces, differential and integral calculi). In the subsequent chapters the richness of mathematical structure and power of the quantum deformation methods and non-commutative geometry is illustrated on the different examples starting from the simplest quantum mechanical system - harmonic oscillator and ending with actual problems of modern field theory, such as the attempts to construct lattice-like regularization consistent with space-time Poincare symmetry and to incorporate Higgs fields in the general geometrical frame of gauge theories. Graduate students and researchers studying the problems of quantum field theory, particle physics and mathematical aspects of quantum symmetries will find the book of interest.