The strong law of large numbers and a functional central limit theorem for general Markov additive processes

Abstract

In this note we re-visit the fundamental question of the strong law of large numbers and central limit theorem for processes in continuous time with conditional stationary and independent increments. For convenience we refer to them as Markov additive processes, or MAPs for short. Historically used in the setting of queuing theory, MAPs have often been written about when the underlying modulating process is an ergodic Markov chain on a finite state space. Recent works have addressed the strong law of large numbers when the underlying modulating process is a general Markov processes. We add to the latter with a different approach based on an ergodic theorem for additive functionals and on the semi-martingale structure of the additive part. This approach also allows us to deal with the setting that the modulator of the MAP is either positive or null recurrent. The methodology additionally inspires a CLT-type result.