Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2007 iii Paper 36 3 d Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-14
Interpret the otherwise undefined here as the moment defined above. For , the process is , and for it is ; both are martingales.
For , the Itô formula and the derivative of the Brownian moment recursion yieldThe stochastic integral is a true martingale on finite horizons, since the required moment is integrable in time. The continuous finite-variation term is not identically zero. If it were, its continuous derivative would vanish at every time, whereas at a fixed , the nondegenerate Gaussian does not almost surely satisfy the polynomial equation . Uniqueness of continuous semimartingale decomposition therefore rules out even the local martingale property. HenceFor example , so merely subtracting its zero expectation cannot make the cubic power a martingale. The centered Brownian powers need not be martingales distinction is resolved by subtracting the random drift compensator instead of the deterministic mean.