Ergodic properties of some piecewise-deterministic Markov process with application to gene expression modelling

Abstract

A piecewise-deterministic Markov process, specified by random jumps and switching semi-flows, as well as the associated Markov chain given by its post-jump locations, are investigated in this paper. The existence of an exponentially attracting invariant measure and the strong law of large numbers are proven for the chain. Further, a one-to-one correspondence between invariant measures for the chain and invariant measures for the continuous-time process is established. This result, together with the aforementioned ergodic properties of the discrete-time model, is used to derive the strong law of large numbers for the process. The studied random dynamical systems are inspired by certain biological models of gene expression, which are also discussed within this paper.