Solution

ID: past-exam-of-the-mathematics-course-of-the-university-of-cambridge/2015/iii/paper-30/3/c/solution

The scalar Lévy characterization of Brownian motion states that an adapted process starting at zero is a Brownian motion if and only if it is a continuous local martingale with
For necessity, the centered independent increments make a Brownian motion a martingale. Their conditional second moments show that is also a martingale. The defining uniqueness of the quadratic variation compensator gives .
For sufficiency, fix and apply the Itô formula to
The time drift cancels the second-order Itô term, leaving . Its real and imaginary parts are local martingales. On any deterministic interval , , so the bounded local martingale criterion makes them true martingales. Therefore
Part (b) proves the Brownian property. This also supplies a proof of Lévy's characterization of Brownian motion through conditional Fourier transforms.

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