Infinite invariant density in a semi-Markov process with continuous state variables

Abstract

We report on a fundamental role of a non-normalized formal steady state, i.e., an infinite invariant density, in a semi-Markov process where the state is determined by the inter-event time of successive renewals. The state describes certain observables found in models of anomalous diffusion, e.g., the velocity in the generalized L\'evy walk model and the energy of a particle in the trap model. In our model, the inter-event-time distribution follows a fat-tailed distribution, which makes the state value more likely to be zero because long inter-event times imply small state values. We find two scaling laws describing the density for the state value, which accumulates in the vicinity of zero in the long-time limit. These laws provide universal behaviors in the accumulation process and give the exact expression of the infinite invariant density. Moreover, we provide two distributional limit theorems for time-averaged observables in these non-stationary processes. We show that the infinite invariant density plays an important role in determining the distribution of time averages.