Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2004 iii Paper 28 2 b Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-14
First the exit time has sufficiently many finite moments. Over any interval of length , a Brownian motion increment has probability of absolute size larger than . If the process is still inside , such an increment forces it to exit before the next interval endpoint. Independence of increments at deterministic times therefore givesThus almost surely and all its positive moments are finite. This justifies extracting moments from its transform rather than presupposing them.
For , put . The processis a martingale, being the average of two exponential martingales for Brownian motion. Apply the optional stopping theorem at the bounded time . Since , the stopped values are bounded by . Continuity gives . Letting by the dominated convergence theorem yieldsHence the Laplace transform of symmetric Brownian interval-exit time isThe value at zero follows from almost-sure finiteness. Expanding the reciprocal givesCompare with part (a), now applicable because of the geometric tail bound. The Brownian symmetric interval-exit moments are
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2013 iii Paper 24 3 b Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-07
Write and . Path continuity gives . Stop the martingale at the bounded stopping time and apply the optional stopping theorem:By the monotone convergence theorem, , so almost surely. Path continuity then gives . The dominated convergence theorem for the bounded variables shows
Next stop the quartic Hermite polynomial martingale from part (a), again only at . Its expectation is zero, soMonotone convergence proves , establishing the needed second-moment integrability before the final passage to the limit. Since and , dominated convergence givesConsequently the Brownian symmetric interval-exit moments are
To obtain the Laplace transform of symmetric Brownian interval-exit time, put . The Exponential martingale for Brownian motion shows thatis a martingale with . Bounded-time stopping gives . Its stopped values are bounded by , so dominated convergence applies as . Since , it yieldsEvery use of stopping at has thus been justified through bounded stopping and an explicit integrability or domination argument.