On level crossings for a general class of piecewise-deterministic Markov processes
arXiv:0705.1863
Abstract
We consider a piecewise-deterministic Markov process governed by a jump intensity function, a rate function that determines the behaviour between jumps, and a stochastic kernel describing the conditional distribution of jump sizes. We study the point process of upcrossings of a level by the Markov process. Our main result shows that, under a suitable scaling , the point process converges, as tends to infinity, weakly to a geometrically compound Poisson process. We also prove a version of Rice's formula relating the stationary density of the process to level crossing intensities. This formula provides an interpretation of the scaling factor . While our proof of the limit theorem requires additional assumptions, Rice's formula holds whenever the (stationary) overall intensity of jumps is finite.
25 pages