Probability measure-valued polynomial diffusions

Abstract

We introduce a class of probability measure-valued diffusions, coined polynomial, of which the well-known Fleming–Viot process is a particular example. The defining property of finite dimensional polynomial processes considered in [8, 21] is transferred to this infinite dimensional setting. This leads to a representation of conditional marginal moments via a finite dimensional linear PDE, whose spatial dimension corresponds to the degree of the moment. As a result, the tractability of finite dimensional polynomial processes are preserved in this setting. We also obtain a representation of the corresponding extended generators, and prove well-posedness of the associated martingale problems. In particular, uniqueness is obtained from the duality relationship with the PDEs mentioned above.