Semi-Markov processes on a general state space: α-theory and quasi-stationarity

By amalgamating the approaches of Tweedie (1974) and Nummelin (1977), an α-theory is developed for general semi-Markov processes. It is shown that α-transient, α-recurrent and α-positive recurrent processes can be defined, with properties analogous to those for transient, recurrent and positive recurrent processes. Limit theorems for α-positive recurrent processes follow by transforming to the probabilistic case, as in the above references: these then give results on the existence and form of quasistationary distributions, extending those of Tweedie (1975) and Nummelin (1976).