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Infra-exponential

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A growth rate is said to be infra-exponential or subexponential if it is dominated by all exponential growth rates, however great the doubling time. A continuous function with infra-exponential growth rate will have a Fourier transform that is a Fourier hyperfunction.[1]

Examples of subexponential growth rates arise in the analysis of algorithms, where they give rise to sub-exponential time complexity, and in the growth rate of groups, where a subexponential growth rate implies that a group is amenable.

A positive-valued, unbounded probability distribution may be called subexponential if its tails are heavy enough so that[2]: Definition 1.1 

See Heavy-tailed distribution § Subexponential distributions. Contrariwise, a random variable may also be called subexponential if its tails are sufficiently light to fall off at an exponential or faster rate.

References

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  1. ^ Fourier hyperfunction in the Encyclopedia of Mathematics
  2. ^ "Subexponential distributions", Charles M. Goldie and Claudia Klüppelberg, pp. 435-459 in A Practical Guide to Heavy Tails: Statistical Techniques for Analysing Heavy Tailed Distributions, eds. R. Adler, R. Feldman and M. S. Taggu, Boston: Birkhäuser, 1998, ISBN 978-0817639518.