Solution

ID: past-exam-of-the-stochastic-modelling-of-biological-processes-course-of-the-university-of-oxford/2023/2/a/solution

The native PDF repeats in its list of independent noise terms, whereas its third stochastic differential equation uses . We use the intended three independent coordinate Brownian motions .
Put , and . Before the origin is reached, Itô's formula gives
The is the sum of three quadratic variation terms, each . The drift contribution is because the numerator is . The radial stochastic integral can be written using a scalar Brownian motion :
Thus is a squared Bessel process of dimension until it reaches zero. If this equation is taken globally with the usual nonnegative squared Bessel process continuation, taking expected values gives
The stochastic integral has zero expected value: stopping first at large levels bounds the integrands, yields a finite first moment for , and then makes finite, so the unrestricted integral is a square-integrable martingale.
Boundary qualification. The punctured domain in the question does not itself specify that continuation. The boundary classification of a Bessel process says that the origin is inaccessible from when , equivalently . In this parameter range the original stochastic differential equation is global in the stated domain and the boxed result holds as written.
For , we have : the origin is reached in finite time with probability one. One can also see accessibility directly from the radial generator of an SDE diffusion
For , the harmonic function is the probability of reaching zero before . Finite-time access follows by using the nonnegative function
in the stopped Itô formula; it bounds the expected value of the time to reach zero or . Letting gives almost sure finite hitting of zero. The coefficients of the original vector stochastic differential equation are undefined there, so its stated punctured-domain version has no prescribed long-time evolution in this range.
The natural continuing radial squared Bessel process gives , but stopping and holding the particle at the origin would give a different answer. Indeed, with the first hit of zero, Itô's formula for the stopped process gives
Since almost surely, dominated convergence applied to gives
Therefore is the usual continued-radial answer; for a boundary convention is necessary. It is not a uniquely defined limit for the punctured-domain model alone.

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