A coupling approach to Doob’s theorem

Abstract

We provide a coupling proof of Doob’s theorem which says that the transition probabilities of a regular Markov process which has an invariant probability measure $\mu$ converge to $\mu$ in the total variation distance. In addition we show that non-singularity (rather than equivalence) of the transition probabilities suffices to ensure convergence of the transition probabilities for $\mu$-almost all initial conditions.