Bisimulation for Feller-Dynkin Processes

Abstract

Bisimulation is a concept that captures behavioural equivalence. It has been studied extensively on nonprobabilistic systems and on discrete-time Markov processes and on so-called continuous-time Markov chains. In the latter, time is continuous but the evolution still proceeds in jumps. We propose two definitions of bisimulation on continuous-time stochastic processes where the evolution is a flow through time. We show that they are equivalent and we show that when restricted to discrete-time, our concept of bisimulation encompasses the standard discrete-time concept. The concept we introduce is not a straightforward generalization of discrete-time concepts.