Continuous local martingale

A continuous local martingale is a local martingale whose sample paths are continuous almost surely. Its quadratic variation determines much of its pathwise behaviour.

A continuous local martingale with finite variation is almost surely constant. After localization, its quadratic variation is both zero, because it has finite variation, and the quantity controlling its $L^2$ increments, because it is a martingale.

Let $M$ be a continuous local martingale with $M_0=0$ and $[M{]}_{\infty }=\infty$. Forthe process $B_s=M_{{\tau }_s}$ is Brownian motion andWhen $[M{]}_{\infty }<\infty$, one can enlarge the probability space and continue $B$ independently beyond that time.

The Brownian motion $B$ in $M_t=B_{[M{]}_t}$ is generally constructed from $M$, so it need not be independent of the quadratic variation $[M]$. For example, $M_t=(W_t^2-t)/2={\int }_0^t{W}_{s}d{W}_s$ has clock ${\int }_0^t{W}_s^{2}ds$, and their dependence can be detected by a nonzero mixed moment.

For every $p>0$ there are constants $c_p,C_p>0$ such that a continuous local martingale $M$ with $M_0=0$ satisfiesfor every stopping time $T$ for which the quantities are finite.