18.12 The Levy skew alpha-Stable Distribution

Random: double gsl_ran_levy_skew (const gsl_rng * r, double c, double alpha, double beta)

This function returns a random variate from the Levy skew stable distribution with scale c, exponent alpha and skewness parameter beta. The skewness parameter must lie in the range [-1,1]. The Levy skew stable probability distribution is defined by a fourier transform,

p(x) = {1 \over 2 \pi} \int_{-\infty}^{+\infty} dt \exp(-it x - |c t|^alpha (1-i beta sign(t) tan(pi alpha/2)))

When \alpha = 1 the term \tan(\pi \alpha/2) is replaced by -(2/\pi)\log|t|. There is no explicit solution for the form of p(x) and the library does not define a corresponding pdf function. For \alpha = 2 the distribution reduces to a Gaussian distribution with \sigma = \sqrt{2} c and the skewness parameter has no effect. For \alpha < 1 the tails of the distribution become extremely wide. The symmetric distribution corresponds to \beta = 0.

The algorithm only works for 0 < alpha <= 2.

The Levy alpha-stable distributions have the property that if N alpha-stable variates are drawn from the distribution p(c, \alpha, \beta) then the sum Y = X_1 + X_2 + \dots + X_N will also be distributed as an alpha-stable variate, p(N^(1/\alpha) c, \alpha, \beta).