Some characterizations of multiple selfdecomposability with extensions and an application to the Gamma function

Abstract

Inspirations for this paper can be traced to Urbanik (1972) where convolution semigroups of multiple decomposable distributions were introduced. In particular, the classical gamma ${\mathbb{G}}_t$ and $\log {\mathbb{G}}_t$, $t>0$ variables are selfdecomposable. In fact, we show that $\log {\mathbb{G}}_t$ is twice selfdecomposable if, and only if, $t\ge t_1\approx 0.15165$. Moreover, we provide several new factorizations of the Gamma function and the Gamma distributions. To this end, we revisit the class of multiply selfdecomposable distributions, denoted $L_n(R)$, and propose handy tools for its characterization, mainly based on the Mellin-Euler's differential operator. Furthermore, we also give a perspective of generalization of the class $L_n(R)$ based on linear operators or on stochastic integral representations.