Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2009 iii Paper 29 4 c Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-14
Define . Positivity and smoothness of make continuous and bounded on compact space-time sets. Brownian paths remain in compact spatial sets on each finite horizon, so almost surely for every . Thusis a well-defined continuous local martingale with . The backward heat equation from part (b) removes the drift in Itô's formula and yieldsBy the allowed fact and the uniqueness in part (a),
The finite-horizon form of the Girsanov theorem used here says: if is a continuous local martingale and its stochastic exponential is a strictly positive true martingale of mean one on , then under every continuous -local martingale becomes the -local martingale . Quadratic variation is unchanged by this locally equivalent change of measure.
All the assumptions hold. The integrand defining is locally square integrable as checked above; is strictly positive; and it is already a true martingale because it is the density process. On each finite horizon , so it is uniformly integrable on that horizon. There is no need to establish a separate Novikov condition, nor to assume equivalence on the infinite-time sigma-algebra.
Take . Its covariation with is . Hence is a continuous -local martingale starting at zero with . The Lévy characterization of Brownian motion makes it Brownian under . Since this argument holds on every finite horizon for the same process ,This is the Brownian change of measure by a positive space-time harmonic function, a Doob h-transform with drift .