Moment functions and laws of large numbers on hypergroups (Q1204291)

The first part of this article is devoted to the study of a large class of hypergroups on the halfline which are characterized by the fact that the characters are eigenfunctions of the differential opertor \({d\over dx^ 2}+{A'\over A}{d\over dx}\). It is proved that hypergroups are obtained if \(A'/A\) has no singularity at the origin or at most one of order 1 and satisfies a certain convexity condition; this condition generalizes the cases already treated by Levitan and Chébli. The support of the convolution products offers some previously unknown peculiarities. In the second part random walks on arbitrary weak hypergroups are investigated. In order to obtain laws of large numbers (and other limit theorems) the notion of moment functions of first and second order is introduced to transform these random walks into martingales on the real line and subsequently apply the well known limit theorems. This leads to laws of large numbers on weak hypergroups; applications of these results to several hypergroups are established.