Ergodic properties of generalized Ornstein--Uhlenbeck processes

We investigate ergodic properties of generalized Ornstein--Uhlenbeck processes. In particular, we provide sufficient conditions for ergodicity, and for subexponential and exponential convergence to the invariant probability measure. We use the Foster--Lyapunov method. The drift conditions are obtained using the explicit form of the generator of the continuous process. In some special cases the optimality of our results can be shown.