Observe on , where is an unknown deterministic drift and is standard Brownian motion. The observation against a deterministic test function is , with covariance . Gaussian white noise is represented by an isonormal Gaussian process on test functions rather than a pointwise noise function. Taking is the usual statistical scaling.
Girsanov density for a stopped Bessel process Created 2026-10-06 Updated 2026-10-07
For reference Brownian motion , stopped at with , this expression is the Radon-Nikodym derivative of the stopped Bessel process law of dimension . The bounded stopped drift verifies the Novikov condition. The comparison laws must have the same initial value and the same stopping rule.
Globally Lipschitz drift and diffusion coefficients have linear growth and give a nonexplosive strong stochastic solution for a prescribed initial state and Brownian motion. The solution satisfies pathwise uniqueness. Local versions apply after stopping inside compact regions.
The laws on continuous paths of a standard Brownian motion and a Brownian motion with drift are mutually singular measures on the whole half-line. The event has full measure for the former and zero measure for the latter by the strong law for Brownian motion. On every fixed finite horizon, their laws are equivalent by the Girsanov theorem. The finite-horizon densities tend to zero almost surely while retaining expectation one, so they lack uniform integrability over all time.
A one-dimensional Brownian motion spends an infinite total time in every nonempty open interval almost surely. To prove this for after first hitting zero, alternate exits from that interval with returns to zero. By recurrence of one-dimensional Brownian motion all these stopping times are finite, and the Strong Markov property makes the successive exit durations independent and identically distributed random variables that are strictly positive. Some fixed positive duration is exceeded with positive probability, so the Borel-Cantelli lemma makes the sum of the durations infinite. Translate and scale for other intervals. In particular, if a nonnegative function is bounded below by a positive constant on such an interval, its infinite-horizon Brownian occupation time integral diverges. Recurrent visits alone, without this duration argument, would not prove divergence of an integral.
The ordinary time integral of standard Brownian motion is a centered Gaussian process with continuously differentiable paths and derivative . For , its covariance is , obtained by integrating the Brownian covariance . Consequently has normal distribution . This time integral is distinct from the Itô integral with respect to Brownian motion.
Itô diffusion Created 2026-09-28 Updated 2026-10-05
An Itô diffusion solves a stochastic differential equation driven by Brownian motion.
Itô integral Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-05
The Itô integral integrates a predictable square-integrable process against Brownian motion. It is defined first for predictable step processes and then completed using the Itô isometry.
Joint distribution of Brownian motion and its running maximum Created 2026-09-29 Updated 2026-10-06
Let for a standard Brownian motion. For , the Brownian reflection principle gives
On , the pair therefore has joint probability density
Let be continuous local martingales starting at zero, with for and almost surely. The individual Dambis-Dubins-Schwarz theorem time changes produce independent standard Brownian motions with . Independence is between the Brownian motions; each may still depend on its own clock.
On an interval where is continuously differentiable, define . The Itô formula transforms into
The transformed Itô diffusion has constant noise coefficient. For a power diffusion , when , and when . This simplifies comparison with Brownian motion and exposes the boundary drift.
For standard Brownian motion started at zero and first exit from , the Laplace transform is for . The stochastic process is the average of two copies of the Exponential martingale for Brownian motion. Its values stopped at are bounded, so bounded-time application of the optional stopping theorem followed by dominated convergence evaluates the transform without assuming uniform integrability of an unstopped exponential martingale on the infinite horizon.
Lévy characterization of Brownian motion Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-10-06
A continuous local martingale with is standard Brownian motion exactly when its quadratic variation satisfies .
A continuous vector-valued local martingale starting at zero is standard multidimensional Brownian motion if its quadratic covariations satisfy . For each deterministic vector , the Itô formula makes a complex local martingale. Its absolute value is bounded on each finite horizon, so it is a true martingale. Its conditional expectation identity gives
This conditional characteristic function identifies a centered multivariate normal distribution with covariance , independent of the past. Thus the coordinates are independent Brownian motions. The converse follows immediately from the standard coordinate quadratic covariations.
For a standard Brownian motion , its Brownian running maximum , and its local time of a semimartingale at zero, the process pairs satisfy
In particular, and are both Reflected Brownian motion and have the same law as processes.
The times of local maxima of a Brownian motion path are dense in the half-line almost surely, and every such local maximum is a strict local maximum. Density follows from nowhere monotonicity of Brownian motion and the extreme value theorem. Strictness follows by checking that maxima over separated rational compact time intervals are unequal; the increment across their gap supplies an independent nondegenerate normal distribution.
A longitudinal Brownian field is a centered Gaussian random field with
where is a valid transverse covariance kernel. For each fixed it is a scaled Brownian motion, and increments over disjoint longitudinal intervals are independent. Such a field drives a Markov model of wave propagation in a random medium. Its formal longitudinal derivative is Gaussian white noise in , with transverse correlations described by ; it is not in general a Brownian sheet.