Wright-Fisher Geometry

This chapter introduces the geometric preliminaries needed to analyze generalized Kimura diffusions, with particular emphasis on Wright–Fisher geometry. It begins with a discussion of the natural domains of definition for generalized Kimura diffusions: polyhedra in Euclidean space or, more generally, abstract manifolds with corners. Amongst the convex polyhedra, the chapter distinguishes the subclass of regular convex polyhedra P. P is a regular convex polyhedron if it is convex and if near any corner, P is the intersection of no more than N half-spaces with corresponding normal vectors that are linearly independent. These definitions establish that any regular convex polyhedron is a manifold with corners. The chapter concludes by defining the general class of elliptic Kimura operators on a manifold with corners P and shows that there is a local normal form for any operator L in this class.