Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2006 iii Paper 31 3 ii Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-14
Put . These sigma-fields increase, and their union generates the continuous Brownian path. Let be the polygonal enhancement. Its coordinates are determined by its displacement and antisymmetric area ; the symmetric second level is .
The given conditional-expectation identities implyFor the second assertion it is important to use area coordinates rather than asserting that the whole tensor signature is a conditional expectation. Write . The local off-diagonal second integral isConditional on their separate dyadic values, the two independent Brownian components remain independent. Thus the conditional expectation of the product in the last term is . The assumed identity for gives the polygonal entry. The reverse entry follows by integration by parts, since the product of the two component increments also has the product of their conditional means. Taking the antisymmetric part proves the area identity. Diagonal second levels are recovered from the geometric identity, rather than from a conditional-expectation claim about squares.
For each fixed dyadic time , the first-level and area conditional expectations are uniformly integrable martingales in . Their targets are measurable with respect to : Brownian area is a limit of stochastic integral sums determined by the path. The martingale convergence theorem gives convergence to and , respectively. The continuous group coordinate formulas then giveat all dyadic times on a common event of probability one.
For the uniform Hölder estimate, fix and put . The given all-order integrability and the group norm comparison implyUse the conditional-expectation formulas, the conditional Jensen inequality, and . The group norm comparison yieldsFirst take all dyadic pairs, a countable collection, and then extend the inequality to all by continuity. Hence the Brownian rough path martingale Hölder bound isFor any , the Doob Lp maximal inequality givesTherefore
To upgrade convergence from dyadic times to every time simultaneously, apply this bound at one positive exponent . The polygonal enhancements are then equicontinuous in the group metric, with a common finite random constant. For a finite dyadic time net, convergence holds at every net point. The triangle inequality bounds the errors at the remaining times by the two Hölder errors to the nearest net point and the error at that point. First let , and then let the net mesh tend to zero. This proves uniform convergence, and in particular convergence for every on one event of probability one.
There is also convergence in each weaker Hölder rough path metric. Uniform convergence of the group coordinates gives uniform convergence of their levelwise increments through the Chen formulas. If , the uniform bounds bound the level- increment differences by a random constant times , while their unweighted suprema tend to zero. Interpolating these two bounds proves convergence with denominators , for . This establishes the nested polygonal approximation of Brownian rough paths in the topology needed for the support argument.