Cylindrical Wiener process 2026-11-05
A Cylindrical Wiener process on a real separable Hilbert space is a linear family of jointly Gaussian processes , indexed by , with continuous trajectories andLinearity can be understood in the space of square-integrable random variables. For a unit vector , is standard Brownian motion; orthogonal directions give independent Brownian motions. The definition specifies all finite collections of observations without requiring a -valued random position.[ref]
An Introduction to Stochastic PDEs by Martin Hairer. Section4.4, Definition4.60 and discussion of identity covariance and larger Hilbert-space realization
For an orthonormal basis , let be independent standard Brownian motions. Thenconverges in mean square for each , since its variance is . The formal vector is different. Its first coordinates have expected squared norm ; for fixed , the strong law of large numbers gives almost surely. The squared norm therefore diverges in infinitely many dimensions. Coordinate observations exist even though the proposed random vector does not belong to .
A Hilbert-Schmidt operator repairs this mismatch: converges as an -valued square-integrable random variable when is finite.[ref]
An Introduction to Stochastic PDEs by Martin Hairer. Section4.4 after Definition4.60; Theorem4.47 applied to Hilbert-Schmidt maps
For example, on , setting gives expected squared norm . This smoothing makes an actual random position, while retaining infinitely many noisy coordinates. It is useful when defining stochastic partial differential equations and their noise terms. Stochastic convolution 2026-11-05
A stochastic convolution propagates random forcing through a linear evolution. Let be a strongly continuous semigroup on a Hilbert space , let be a Cylindrical Wiener process on a Hilbert space , and let be a bounded linear operator. The expressionis an Itô integral whenever its integrand is square integrable in the Hilbert-Schmidt operator norm. In particular,This Itô isometry tests whether the accumulated forcing is actually -valued. The factor evolves the contribution arriving at time through the remaining time . For with deterministic initial value , the mild solution is .[ref]
An Introduction to Stochastic PDEs by Martin Hairer. §6, Definition 6.5, equation 6.3 and Remark 6.6; §4.4, Hilbert-space stochastic integration
For , and real Brownian motion , with ,This is the zero-initial-value Ornstein-Uhlenbeck process: damping limits the variance despite continued forcing. With , the limit is instead. These formulas follow by integrating in the Itô isometry.
The word convolution describes the dependence on the time difference . It does not mean an ordinary integral against a differentiable noise function; Brownian motion requires a stochastic integral.