Stochastic properties of the linear multifractional stable motion

We study a family of locally self-similar stochastic processes Y = (Y (t)heR with a-stable distributions, called linear multifractional stable motions. They have infinite variance and may possess skewed distributions. The linear multifractional stable motion processes include, in particular, the classical linear fractional stable motion processes, which have stationary increments and are self-similar with self-similarity parameter H. The linear multifractional stable motion process Y is obtained by replacing the self-similarity parameter H in the integral representation of the linear fractional stable motion process by a deterministic function H (t). Whereas the linear fractional stable motion is always continuous in probability, this is not in general the case for Y. We obtain necessary and sufficient conditions for the continuity in probability of the process Y. We also examine the effect of the regularity of the function H (t) on the local structure of the process. We show that under certain Hölder regularity conditions on the function H (t), the process Y is locally equivalent to a linear fractional stable motion process, in the sense of finite-dimensional distributions. We study Y by using a related o-stable random field and its partial derivatives.