Understanding the strong Markov property for stopping times

conditional probabilitymarkov chainsmarkov-processprobability theory

I'm studying a Markov process $(\mathcal{X}, \mathcal{F}, \mu_0)$ with transition probabilities $\pi_n$ and with a stopping time $\tau:\mathcal{X}^\infty \to \mathbb{N}\cup\{0, \infty\}$.
Thus we have a space of all chains and a probability on it – $(\mathcal{X}^\infty, \mathcal{F}^\infty, P)$.
We also have a subalgebra $\mathcal{F}_\tau \subset \mathcal{F}^\infty$.
See page 16 of Varadhan's notes for the details.

Lemma 4.10 has an equation
\begin{equation}\label{Lemma}\tag{1}
P_x\left\lbrace X_{\tau+1} \in A_1, \dots , X_{\tau+n} \in A_n | \mathcal{F}_\tau \right\rbrace
= \int_{A_1}\dots \int_{A_n} \pi(x_{n-1},dx_n)\dots\pi(X_\tau, dx_1)
\end{equation}

which is claimed to hold 'a.e. on $\{\tau< \infty\}$.'

Question 1: What is the symbol $P_x$? The a.e. property on $\mathcal{X}^\infty$, and the fact that the Lemma states '$x=X_\tau$', leads me to believe I should read \eqref{Lemma} with a dependence on $\omega \in \mathcal{X}^\infty$ as follows:
\begin{equation}\label{omega}\tag{2}
P_{X_\tau(\omega)} \left\lbrace X_{\tau+1} \in A_1, \dots , X_{\tau+n} \in A_n | \mathcal{F}_\tau \right\rbrace
=\int_{A_1}\dots \int_{A_n} \pi(x_{n-1},dx_n)\dots\pi(X_\tau(\omega), dx_1)
\end{equation}

Further, the subscript notation leads me to believe we are disintegrating the measure $P$ on the subalgebra $\mathcal{F}_\tau$ as in Theorem 4.7 of the notes.
On the other hand $X_\tau(\omega)$ is in $\mathcal{X}$ rather than $\mathcal{X}^\infty$

So I ask again; what is $P_x$? Hope someone can clarify/dumb it down for me.

Best Answer

I put the main points from the comments to the question in this answer:

For a fixed $x$ you have the probability measure $P_x$ on $\mathcal{X}^\infty$. This is the law of the Markov chain $X$ when it starts from the point $x$. Here you also have a sub-sigma-algebra $\mathcal{F}_\tau$. So $P_x(X_{\tau+1}\in A_1,\dotsc,X_{\tau+n}\in A_n|\mathcal{F}_n)=E_x[1_{A_1\times\dotsm\times A_n}(X_{\tau+1},\dotsc,X_{\tau+n})|\mathcal{F}_{\tau}]$. The reason there is no $x$ on the right-hand side in (1) is because this conditional probability does not depend on $x$. It only depends on the value of $X_\tau$. This is the essence of the strong Markov property.

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