Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2004 iii Paper 30 2 b Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-14
Write with a zero-starting Brownian motion. A unit-time increment exceeds with probabilityIf the process has not exited before an integer time , it is in ; an increment exceeding forces it outside at time and hence forces an exit by then. Independence of Brownian increments gives . Thus the geometric tail bound from a uniform escape probability yieldsIn particular is finite almost surely.
The diffusion generator is . The function satisfies , so the Itô formula gives . It is a true martingale, since it is times the Gaussian exponential martingale . The stopped values are uniformly bounded because the stopped path stays in . Optional sampling and bounded convergence givewhere continuity ensures that is exactly one of the two endpoints. Solving,This drifted Brownian interval-exit probability tends to as , as expected.