Brownian filtration 2026-10-05
A filtration is a Brownian filtration for when is an adapted process and each future increment is independent of . The natural filtration of a Brownian motion has this property. Arbitrary enlargement by future information need not preserve it.
The natural Brownian filtration is the natural filtration generated by a Brownian motion. Its usual augmentation adds null events and makes it right-continuous; the Brownian martingale representation theorem holds for this augmented natural filtration. A larger Brownian filtration can preserve independence of future increments while containing additional randomness, so it need not have martingale representation with respect to the specified Brownian motion.
Use the usual completed right-continuous Brownian filtration. The strict passage process is finite at every level on one probability-one event: finiteness at all integer levels from (a) suffices by monotonicity. Also almost surely by (b).
For each fixed , is a stopping time with . The Strong Markov property shows that the passage times above this level depend on a new independent standard Brownian motion. Thus for , is independent of the past at and has the same law as . Iteration gives independent increments and stationary increments in the level parameter. From (a) and fixed-level equality,
For , this also proves continuity in probability at zero, since
Finally, with , we have . This strict generalized inverse of a nondecreasing function is right-continuous: if , then for any we have , and eventually , which forces . Monotonicity gives the reverse bound. Monotonicity and local finiteness also give finite left limits. Hence is the Brownian first-passage subordinator, with càdlàg paths.
Now condition on this clock, which is independent of . For a deterministic partition , write and . Conditional on the clock these are independent centered Gaussian increments, with respective variances . Consequently
Factorization and dependence only on interval lengths prove independent increments and stationary increments for . For small , in probability, and independence and continuity of imply in probability. For example, bound its deviation probability by and then let and . Stationary increments give stochastic continuity at every deterministic level. Composition of the continuous path of with the nondecreasing càdlàg clock gives càdlàg paths for , and . Thus
This is subordination of a Lévy process. Using strict passage times ensures the required right-continuous path choice, despite their fixed-level equality with the non-strict times.
For a stopping time of a Brownian filtration, define the reflected stochastic process
The Brownian reflection at a stopping time form of the Brownian reflection principle states that is again standard Brownian motion. If , leave the path unchanged; the second branch is used only when .
For an almost surely finite , the Strong Markov property says that is a fresh Brownian motion independent of . Its negative has the same probability distribution, so reflecting the future preserves the full path probability distribution. Allowing follows by applying this argument to and restricting to each fixed finite time interval.