Lecture Notes on Stationary Gamma Processes

Abstract

For each $\lambda>0$ and every square-integrable infinitely-divisible (ID) distribution there exists at least one stationary stochastic process $t\mapsto X_t$ with the specified distribution for $X_1$ and with first-order autoregressive (AR(1)) structure in the sense that the autocorrelation of $X_s$ and $X_t$ is $\exp(-\lambda|s-t|)$ for all indices $s,t$. For the special case of the standard Normal distribution, the process $X_t$ is unique -- namely, the first-order autoregressive Ornstein-Uhlenbeck velocity process. The process $X_t$ is also uniquely determined if $X_1$ is accorded the unit rate Poisson distribution. For the Gamma distribution, however, $X_t$ is \emph{not} determined uniquely. In these lecture notes we describe six distinct processes with the same univariate marginal distributions and AR(1) autocorrelation function. We explore a few of their properties and describe methods of simulating their sample paths.