This book evolved from several stacks of lecture notes written over a decade and given in classes at slightly varying levels. In transforming the over lapping material into a book, I aimed at presenting some of the best features of the subject with a minimum of prerequisities and technicalities. (Needless to say, one man's technicality is another's professionalism. ) But a text frozen in print does not allow for the latitude of the classroom; and the tendency to expand becomes harder to curb without the constraints of time and audience. The result is that this volume contains more topics and details than I had intended, but I hope the forest is still visible with the trees. The book begins at the beginning with the Markov property, followed quickly by the introduction of option al times and martingales. These three topics in the discrete parameter setting are fully discussed in my book A Course In Probability Theory (second edition, Academic Press, 1974). The latter will be referred to throughout this book as the Course, and may be considered as a general background; its specific use is limited to the mate rial on discrete parameter martingale theory cited in § 1. 4. Apart from this and some dispensable references to Markov chains as examples, the book is self-contained.

From the reviews of the First Edition: "This excellent book is based on several sets of lecture notes written over a decade and has its origin in a one-semester course given by the author at the ETH, Zürich, in the spring of 1970. The author's aim was to present some of the best features of Markov processes and, in particular, of Brownian motion with a minimum of prerequisites and technicalities. The reader who becomes acquainted with the volume cannot but agree with the reviewer that the author was very successful in accomplishing this goal...The volume is very useful for people who wish to learn Markov processes but it seems to the reviewer that it is also of great interest to specialists in this area who could derive much stimulus from it. One can be convinced that it will receive wide circulation." (Mathematical Reviews) This new edition contains 9 new chapters which include new exercises, references, and multiple corrections throughout the original text.

This volume shows modern probabilistic methods in action: Brownian Motion Process as applied to the electrical phenomena investigated by Green et al., beginning with the Newton-Coulomb potential and ending with solutions by first and last exits of Brownian paths from conductors.

From the reviews of the First Edition: "This excellent book is based on several sets of lecture notes written over a decade and has its origin in a one-semester course given by the author at the ETH, Zürich, in the spring of 1970. The author's aim was to present some of the best features of Markov processes and, in particular, of Brownian motion with a minimum of prerequisites and technicalities. The reader who becomes acquainted with the volume cannot but agree with the reviewer that the author was very successful in accomplishing this goal...The volume is very useful for people who wish to learn Markov processes but it seems to the reviewer that it is also of great interest to specialists in this area who could derive much stimulus from it. One can be convinced that it will receive wide circulation." (Mathematical Reviews) This new edition contains 9 new chapters which include new exercises, references, and multiple corrections throughout the original text.

Stochastic calculus and excursion theory are very efficient tools for obtaining either exact or asymptotic results about Brownian motion and related processes. This book focuses on special classes of Brownian functionals, including Gaussian subspaces of the Gaussian space of Brownian motion; Brownian quadratic funtionals; Brownian local times; Exponential functionals of Brownian motion with drift; Time spent by Brownian motion below a multiple of its one-sided supremum.

The following notes represent approximately the second half of the lectures I gave in the Nachdiplomvorlesung, in ETH, Zurich, between October 1991 and February 1992, together with the contents of six additional lectures I gave in ETH, in November and December 1993. Part I, the elder brother of the present book [Part II], aimed at the computation, as explicitly as possible, of a number of interesting functionals of Brownian motion. It may be natural that Part II, the younger brother, looks more into the main technique with which Part I was "working", namely: martingales and stochastic calculus. As F. Knight writes, in a review article on Part I, in which research on Brownian motion is compared to gold mining: "In the days of P. Levy, and even as late as the theorems of "Ray and Knight" (1963), it was possible for the practiced eye to pick up valuable reward without the aid of much technology . . . Thereafter, however, the rewards are increasingly achieved by the application of high technology". Although one might argue whether this golden age is really foregone, and discuss the "height" of the technology involved, this quotation is closely related to the main motivations of Part II: this technology, which includes stochastic calculus for general discontinuous semi-martingales, enlargement of filtrations, . . .

This eagerly awaited textbook covers everything the graduate student in probability wants to know about Brownian motion, as well as the latest research in the area. Starting with the construction of Brownian motion, the book then proceeds to sample path properties like continuity and nowhere differentiability. Notions of fractal dimension are introduced early and are used throughout the book to describe fine properties of Brownian paths. The relation of Brownian motion and random walk is explored from several viewpoints, including a development of the theory of Brownian local times from random walk embeddings. Stochastic integration is introduced as a tool and an accessible treatment of the potential theory of Brownian motion clears the path for an extensive treatment of intersections of Brownian paths. An investigation of exceptional points on the Brownian path and an appendix on SLE processes, by Oded Schramm and Wendelin Werner, lead directly to recent research themes.

This book offers a rigorous and self-contained presentation of stochastic integration and stochastic calculus within the general framework of continuous semimartingales. The main tools of stochastic calculus, including Itô’s formula, the optional stopping theorem and Girsanov’s theorem, are treated in detail alongside many illustrative examples. The book also contains an introduction to Markov processes, with applications to solutions of stochastic differential equations and to connections between Brownian motion and partial differential equations. The theory of local times of semimartingales is discussed in the last chapter. Since its invention by Itô, stochastic calculus has proven to be one of the most important techniques of modern probability theory, and has been used in the most recent theoretical advances as well as in applications to other fields such as mathematical finance. Brownian Motion, Martingales, and Stochastic Calculus provides a strong theoretical background to the reader interested in such developments. Beginning graduate or advanced undergraduate students will benefit from this detailed approach to an essential area of probability theory. The emphasis is on concise and efficient presentation, without any concession to mathematical rigor. The material has been taught by the author for several years in graduate courses at two of the most prestigious French universities. The fact that proofs are given with full details makes the book particularly suitable for self-study. The numerous exercises help the reader to get acquainted with the tools of stochastic calculus.

Building upon the previous editions, this textbook is a first course in stochastic processes taken by undergraduate and graduate students (MS and PhD students from math, statistics, economics, computer science, engineering, and finance departments) who have had a course in probability theory. It covers Markov chains in discrete and continuous time, Poisson processes, renewal processes, martingales, and option pricing. One can only learn a subject by seeing it in action, so there are a large number of examples and more than 300 carefully chosen exercises to deepen the reader’s understanding. Drawing from teaching experience and student feedback, there are many new examples and problems with solutions that use TI-83 to eliminate the tedious details of solving linear equations by hand, and the collection of exercises is much improved, with many more biological examples. Originally included in previous editions, material too advanced for this first course in stochastic processes has been eliminated while treatment of other topics useful for applications has been expanded. In addition, the ordering of topics has been improved; for example, the difficult subject of martingales is delayed until its usefulness can be applied in the treatment of mathematical finance.

Self-contained presentation: from elementary material to state-of-the-art research; Much of the theory in book-form for the first time; Connections are made between probability and other areas of mathematics, engineering and mathematical physics