On a functional contraction method

Abstract: Methods for proving functional limit laws are developed for sequences of stochastic processes which allow a recursive distributional decomposition either in time or space. Our approach is an extension of the so-called contraction method to the space $\mathcal{C}[0,1]$ of continuous functions endowed with uniform topology and the space $\mathcal {D}[0,1]$ of c`{a}dl`{a}g functions with the Skorokhod topology. The contraction method originated from the probabilistic analysis of algorithms and random trees where characteristics satisfy natural distributional recurrences. It is based on stochastic fixed-point equations, where probability metrics can be used to obtain contraction properties and allow the application of Banach's fixed-point theorem. We develop the use of the Zolotarev metrics on the spaces $\mathcal{C}[0,1]$ and $\mathcal{D}[0,1]$ in this context. Applications are given, in particular, a short proof of Donsker's functional limit theorem is derived and recurrences arising in the probabilistic analysis of algorithms are discussed.