Heavy-tailed asymptotics of stationary probability vectors of Markov chains of gi/g/1 type

Abstract

In this paper, we provide a novel approach to studying the heavy-tailed asymptotics of the stationary probability vector of a Markov chain of GI/G/1 type, whose transition matrix is constructed from two matrix sequences referred to as a boundary matrix sequence and a repeating matrix sequence, respectively. We first provide a necessary and sufficient condition under which the stationary probability vector is heavy tailed. Then we derive the long-tailed asymptotics of the R-measure in terms of the RG-factorization of the repeating matrix sequence, and a Wiener-Hopf equation for the boundary matrix sequence. Based on this, we are able to provide a detailed analysis of the subexponential asymptotics of the stationary probability vector.