SDE approximation by Euler scheme

We simulate a one dimensional Ornstein-Uhlenbeck process by using an Euler approximation of the solution to the corresponding stochastic differential equation.

# Euler-Maryuama Approximation for solution of SDE  dX_t = -gamma X_t dt + sigma dB_t

import numpy as np 
# makes numpy routines and data types available as np.[name ouf routine or data type]

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt 
# makes plotting command available as plt.[name of command]

x0 = 5.
# initial value at time t=0 
sigma = 2.
# volatility
gamma = .5
# friction coefficient

tmax = 5.
# simulation of process from time 0 to tmax
stepslist = [10,100,1000,10000]
# produce simulations with step numbers chosen from steplist

for steps in stepslist:
    h = tmax/steps
    # stepsize for time discretization
    std = np.sqrt(h)
    # standard deviation for the distribution of each step

    k = 100
    # number of samples that will be simulated

    noise = np.random.randn(steps,k)*std
    # create a steps times k dimensional matrix of normal random numbers 
    # with variance h 


    sde = np.ones((steps,k))
    sde = sde*x0
    # initialize the array sde with the initial condition x0

    for n in range(steps-1):
        sde[n+1] = sde[n]-gamma*h*sde[n]+sigma*noise[n]

    t = np.arange(0,steps,1)*h
    # creates vector of time points

    plt.figure(figsize=(10,6), dpi=80)
    # sets size of plot
    plt.plot(t,sde,linewidth=0.3)
    # produces a plot of the sample solutions in the components of sde 
    # versus t with thin lines
    plt.show()
    # output of plot