Approximation of birth-death processes

Abstract

The birth-death process is a special type of continuous-time Markov chain with index set $\mathbb{N}$. Its resolvent matrix can be fully characterized by a set of parameters $(\gamma, \beta, \nu)$, where $\gamma$ and $\beta$ are non-negative constants, and $\nu$ is a positive measure on $\mathbb{N}$. By employing the Ray-Knight compactification, the birth-death process can be realized as a c\`adl\`ag process with strong Markov property on the one-point compactification space $\overline{\mathbb{N}}_{\partial}$, which includes an additional cemetery point $\partial$. In a certain sense, the three parameters that determine the birth-death process correspond to its killing, reflecting, and jumping behaviors at $\infty$ used for the one-point compactification, respectively. In general, providing a clear description of the trajectories of a birth-death process, especially in the pathological case where $|\nu|=\infty$, is challenging. This paper aims to address this issue by studying the birth-death process using approximation methods. Specifically, we will approximate the birth-death process with simpler birth-death processes that are easier to comprehend. For two typical approximation methods, our main results establish the weak convergence of a sequence of probability measures, which are induced by the approximating processes, on the space of all c\`adl\`ag functions. This type of convergence is significantly stronger than the convergence of transition matrices typically considered in the theory of continuous-time Markov chains.