Laplace approximations for large deviations of nonreversible Markov processes. The nondegenerate case

We are investigating Markov process expectations for large time of the form $\exp(TF(L_T))$, where $L_T$ is the empirical measure of a uniformly ergodic Markov process and $F$ is a smooth functional. Such expressions are evaluated to a factor which converges to 1. In contrast to earlier work on the subject, it is not assumed that the process is reversible