Total variation bound for Milstein scheme without iterated integrals

Abstract The paper gives new results for the Milstein scheme of stochastic differential equations. We show that (i) the Milstein scheme holds as a weak approximation in total variation sense and is given by second-order polynomials of Brownian motion without using iterated integrals under non-commutative vector fields; (ii) the accuracy of the Milstein scheme is better than that of the Euler–Maruyama scheme in an asymptotic sense. In particular, we prove d TV ⁢ ( X T ε , X ¯ T ε , Mil , ( n ) ) ≤ C ⁢ ε 2 / n d_{\mathrm{TV}}(X_{T}^{\varepsilon},\bar{X}_{T}^{\varepsilon,\mathrm{Mil},(n)})\leq C\varepsilon^{2}/n and d TV ⁢ ( X T ε , X ¯ T ε , EM , ( n ) ) ≤ C ⁢ ε / n d_{\mathrm{TV}}(X_{T}^{\varepsilon},\bar{X}_{T}^{\varepsilon,\mathrm{EM},(n)})\leq C\varepsilon/n , where d TV d_{\mathrm{TV}} is the total variation distance, X ε X^{\varepsilon} is a solution of a stochastic differential equation with a small parameter 𝜀, and X ¯ ε , Mil , ( n ) \bar{X}^{\varepsilon,\mathrm{Mil},(n)} and X ¯ ε , EM , ( n ) \bar{X}^{\varepsilon,\mathrm{EM},(n)} are the Milstein scheme without iterated integrals and the Euler–Maruyama scheme, respectively. In computational aspect, the scheme is useful to estimate probability distribution functions by a simple simulation without Lévy area computation. Numerical examples demonstrate the validity of the method.