The Geometry of Filtering

Abstract

Geometry arising from two diffusion operators (smooth semi-elliptic, second order differential operators) on different spaces but intertwined by a smooth map is described. Particular cases arise from Riemannian submersions when the operators are Laplace-Beltrami operators, from equivariant operators on the total space of a principal bundle, and for the operators on the diffeomorphism group arising from stochastic flows. Classical non-linear filtering problems also lead to such conffigurations. A basic tool is the, possibly, non-linear "semi-connection" induced by this set up, leading to a canonical decomposition of the operator on the domain space. Topics discussed include: generalised Wietzenbock curvatures arising in the equivariant case, skew -product decompositions of diffusion processes, conditioned processes, classical filtering, decomposition of stochastic flows, and connections determined by stochastic differential equations.