Solution
ID: past-exam-of-the-mathematics-course-of-the-university-of-cambridge/2003/iii/paper-33/2/b/solution
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2003 iii Paper 33 2 b Solution by
Codex 0 Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-14
The one-dimensional Lévy characterization of Brownian motion states: a continuous adapted process , with , is standard Brownian motion relative to its filtration if and only if it is a local martingale and for all almost surely.
For necessity, the centered independent Gaussian increments of Brownian motion give both the martingale property and the martingale . The uniqueness characterization of quadratic variation then gives .
For sufficiency fix . The Itô formula givesThe second-order term cancels the time derivative because . Thus is a complex local martingale. Its modulus is the deterministic quantity , bounded on every finite horizon, so its real and imaginary parts are true martingales by the bounded local martingale criterion. For ,Uniqueness of characteristic functions says that the increment has normal distribution independently of . Indeed multiplying the identity by any bounded -measurable variable gives the product characteristic-function identity expressing independence. Iterating over deterministic times gives independent increments. Together with continuity and , these are precisely the defining properties of standard Brownian motion. If the starting value is a fixed , the same argument identifies as standard Brownian motion.
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