Solution

ID: past-exam-of-the-short-options-paper-shared-by-prelims-and-parts-a-and-b-of-the-physics-course-of-the-university-of-oxford/2012/s12/3/1/solution

Write the one-dimensional random walk endpoint as , starting at the origin. Assume unbiased, independent increments, each with and . Expanding the square gives
Independence makes each cross expectation . Consequently
Uncorrelated increments with the same second moments would suffice. Unbiasedness alone does not remove correlations: persistent or anticorrelated steps need not satisfy this result. The symbol is already the mean-square step size, with units of length squared.

New to topics? Read the docs here!