Solution

ID: past-exam-of-the-mathematics-course-of-the-university-of-cambridge/2023/iii/paper-203/2/b/solution

For the Bessel process
the scale function of a one-dimensional diffusion is when . If , the boundary hitting probability from a diffusion scale function gives
If , then and . Letting and then shows that the process cannot escape to infinity before reaching zero. The exit time from each bounded interval is finite almost surely, so almost surely.
If , then in absolute value as . Equivalently,
Thus the process does not hit zero. The borderline case has scale function and also does not hit zero. This is the Hitting-zero classification for a Bessel process.

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