Conditional persistence of Gaussian random walks

Abstract

Let $\{X_n\}_{n\geq1}$ be a sequence of i.i.d. standard Gaussian random variables, let $S_n=\sum_{i=1}^nX_i$ be the Gaussian random walk, and let $T_n=\sum_{i=1}^nS_i$ be the integrated (or iterated) Gaussian random walk. In this paper we derive the following upper and lower bounds for the conditional persistence:$$\mathbb{P}\left\{\max_{1\leq k \leq n}T_{k} \leq 0\,\,\Big|\,\,T_n=0,S_n=0\right\}\lesssim n^{-1/2},\ \mathbb{P}\left\{\max_{1\leq k \leq 2n}T_{k} \leq 0\,\,\Big|\,\,T_{2n}=0,S_{2n}=0\right\}\gtrsim\frac{n^{-1/2}}{\log n},$$for $n\rightarrow\infty,$ which partially proves a conjecture by Caravenna and Deuschel (2008).