Behavior of general one-dimensional diffusion processes

Abstract

We develop simple rigorous techniques to estimate the behavior of general one-dimensional diffusion processes. Any one-dimensional diffusion process (with drift) can be mapped onto a symmetric diffusion through an explicit change of variable. For such processes we can estimate explicitly the diffusion exponent, the recurrence properties, and the large fluctuations. In a second part, we apply these results to different models (including the Sinai random walk: diffusion in a random drift) and we show how the main features of the diffusion can be readily handled.