Large deviation exponential inequalities for supermartingales

Abstract

Let $(X_{i}, \mathcal{F}_{i})_{i\geq 1}$ be a sequence of supermartingale differences and let $S_k=\sum_{i=1}^k X_i$. We give an exponential moment condition under which $P(\max_{1\leq k \leq n} S_k \geq n)=O(\exp\{-C_1 n^{\alpha}\}),$ $n\rightarrow \infty,$ where $\alpha \in (0, 1)$ is given and $C_{1}>0$ is a constant. We also show that the power $\alpha$ is optimal under the given condition. In particular, when $\alpha=1/3$, we recover an inequality of Lesigne and Voln\'{y}.