P. Lévy's work on random walks with infinite moments, developed more than half a century ago, has now been fully appreciated as a foundation of probabilistic aspects of fractals and chaos as well as scale-invariant processes. This is the first book for physicists devoted to Lévy processes. It includes thorough review articles on applications in fluid and gas dynamics, in dynamical systems including anomalous diffusion and in statistical mechanics. Various articles approach mathematical problems and finally the volume addresses problems in theoretical biology. The book is introduced by a personal recollection of P. Lévy written by B. Mandelbrot.

This multi-author reference work provides a unique introduction to the currently emerging, highly interdisciplinary field of those transport processes that cannot be described by using standard methods of statistical mechanics. It comprehensively summarizes topics ranging from mathematical foundations of anomalous dynamics to the most recent experiments in this field. In so doing, this monograph extracts and emphasizes common principles and methods from many different disciplines while providing up-to-date coverage of this new field of research, considering such diverse applications as plasma physics, glassy material, cell science, and socio-economic aspects. The book will be of interest to both theorists and experimentalists in nonlinear dynamics, statistical physics and stochastic processes. It also forms an ideal starting point for graduate students moving into this area. 18 chapters written by internationally recognized experts in this field provide in-depth introductions to fundamental aspects of anomalous transport.

A Lévy process is a continuous-time analogue of a random walk, and as such, is at the cradle of modern theories of stochastic processes. Martingales, Markov processes, and diffusions are extensions and generalizations of these processes. In the past, representatives of the Lévy class were considered most useful for applications to either Brownian motion or the Poisson process. Nowadays the need for modeling jumps, bursts, extremes and other irregular behavior of phenomena in nature and society has led to a renaissance of the theory of general Lévy processes. Researchers and practitioners in fields as diverse as physics, meteorology, statistics, insurance, and finance have rediscovered the simplicity of Lévy processes and their enormous flexibility in modeling tails, dependence and path behavior. This volume, with an excellent introductory preface, describes the state-of-the-art of this rapidly evolving subject with special emphasis on the non-Brownian world. Leading experts present surveys of recent developments, or focus on some most promising applications. Despite its special character, every topic is aimed at the non- specialist, keen on learning about the new exciting face of a rather aged class of processes. An extensive bibliography at the end of each article makes this an invaluable comprehensive reference text. For the researcher and graduate student, every article contains open problems and points out directions for futurearch. The accessible nature of the work makes this an ideal introductory text for graduate seminars in applied probability, stochastic processes, physics, finance, and telecommunications, and a unique guide to the world of Lévy processes.

Publisher Description

An accessible introduction for applied mathematicians to concepts and techniques for describing, quantifying, and understanding dynamics under uncertainty.

Risk control and derivative pricing have become of major concern to financial institutions, and there is a real need for adequate statistical tools to measure and anticipate the amplitude of the potential moves of the financial markets. Summarising theoretical developments in the field, this 2003 second edition has been substantially expanded. Additional chapters now cover stochastic processes, Monte-Carlo methods, Black-Scholes theory, the theory of the yield curve, and Minority Game. There are discussions on aspects of data analysis, financial products, non-linear correlations, and herding, feedback and agent based models. This book has become a classic reference for graduate students and researchers working in econophysics and mathematical finance, and for quantitative analysts working on risk management, derivative pricing and quantitative trading strategies.