This text is designed both for students of probability and stochastic processes, and for students of functional analysis. For the reader not familiar with functional analysis a detailed introduction to necessary notions and facts is provided. However, this is not a straight textbook in functional analysis; rather, it presents some chosen parts of functional analysis that can help understand ideas from probability and stochastic processes. The subjects range from basic Hilbert and Banach spaces, through weak topologies and Banach algebras, to the theory of semigroups of bounded linear operators. Numerous standard and non-standard examples and exercises make the book suitable as a course textbook or for self-study.
This book presents a detailed and contemporary account of the classical theory of convergence of semigroups and its more recent development treating the case where the limit semigroup, in contrast to the approximating semigroups, acts merely on a subspace of the original Banach space (this is the case, for example, with singular perturbations). The author demonstrates the far-reaching applications of this theory using real examples from various branches of pure and applied mathematics, with a particular emphasis on mathematical biology. The book may serve as a useful reference, containing a significant number of new results ranging from the analysis of fish populations to signaling pathways in living cells. It comprises many short chapters, which allows readers to pick and choose those topics most relevant to them, and it contains 160 end-of-chapter exercises so that readers can test their understanding of the material as they go along.
This text is designed both for students of probability and stochastic processes, and for students of functional analysis. For the reader not familiar with functional analysis a detailed introduction to necessary notions and facts is provided. However, this is not a straight textbook in functional analysis; rather, it presents some chosen parts of functional analysis that can help understand ideas from probability and stochastic processes. The subjects range from basic Hilbert and Banach spaces, through weak topologies and Banach algebras, to the theory of semigroups of bounded linear operators. Numerous standard and non-standard examples and exercises make the book suitable as a course textbook or for self-study.
Elementary treatments of Markov chains, especially those devoted to discrete-time and finite state-space theory, leave the impression that everything is smooth and easy to understand. This exposition of the works of Kolmogorov, Feller, Chung, Kato, and other mathematical luminaries, which focuses on time-continuous chains but is not so far from being elementary itself, reminds us again that the impression is false: an infinite, but denumerable, state-space is where the fun begins. If you have not heard of Blackwell's example (in which all states are instantaneous), do not understand what the minimal process is, or do not know what happens after explosion, dive right in. But beware lest you are enchanted: 'There are more spells than your commonplace magicians ever dreamed of.'
Many results, both from semigroup theory itself and from the applied sciences, are phrased in discipline-specific languages and hence are hardly known to a broader community. This volume contains a se
