For a continuous function on , let be its dyadic slope martingale. Then is an absolutely continuous function if and only if
This is exactly uniform integrability. The uniformly integrable martingale convergence theorem gives convergence in L1 , while their integrated linear interpolations converge uniformly to . Hence . Conversely, if has density , its slopes are , and the uniform integrability of conditional expectations proves the criterion. The dyadic tail integral is also the sum of the absolute endpoint increments in cells whose slope is at least in magnitude.
Take with its Borel sigma-algebra and Lebesgue measure of total mass one. Let be the finite sigma-algebra generated by the half-open dyadic intervals of length . Set if the indexing begins at one. Each is adapted to this filtration, and if is a Lipschitz constant of , then , so every coordinate is integrable.
On a parent interval , conditional expectation averages the two equally likely child values. Their average is
Thus , establishing the dyadic slope martingale. One can equivalently include as a separate null atom without changing any probability law.
The dyadic slope martingale is uniformly bounded by . The martingale convergence theorem gives an almost-sure limit , and dominated convergence gives L1 convergence. Define on the null exceptional set and at the endpoint. This gives a measurable representative with everywhere.
If are dyadic rationals, then for every sufficiently fine grid the integral telescopes:
Pass to the limit by L1 convergence. For arbitrary endpoints choose dyadic , with . The error in the integrals is at most , and Lipschitz continuity controls the error in the endpoint values by the same expression. Therefore
This constructs the bounded integral density directly, without assuming in advance that a Lipschitz function has an almost everywhere derivative.
Work on as a probability space, with Lebesgue measure of total mass one. Let be the filtration generated by the level- half-open dyadic cells together with the separate null cell . Define the dyadic slope martingale by
The endpoint may be assigned any value, since it is a null set for Lebesgue measure. The two child slopes average to their parent slope, by telescoping the two increments. Therefore almost everywhere, so this is a martingale. The Lipschitz condition gives everywhere except possibly at the freely chosen endpoint, where we take zero.
Apply the Lp martingale convergence theorem with . Its limit has almost everywhere and in L1 norm as well, by Cauchy-Schwarz inequality. Choose a measurable representative of and set it to zero on any exceptional null set; it is then a bounded measurable function on the entire interval.
Set . Telescoping at the grid points shows that is the linear interpolation of on the dyadic grid. The Lipschitz condition gives . Also
The two uniform limits coincide, giving the absolutely continuous function representation
The chosen bound holds for every after the null-set modification; the integral identity holds for every simultaneously.
Use the same dyadic slope martingale and dyadic filtration as in (c). Each is integrable, since it takes finitely many finite values. On each dyadic cell, the absolute slope is times the absolute endpoint increment. Consequently the hypothesis in the PDF is exactly
Thus is uniformly integrable. It is also bounded in L1 norm: choose a finite at which the supremum of the tails is finite, and use . The uniformly integrable martingale convergence theorem supplies with in L1 norm.
The functions are again the dyadic linear interpolations of . Since is continuous on a compact interval, it is uniformly continuous, and , where is its modulus of continuity. On the other hand, the integral of is uniformly bounded in absolute value by . Hence the dyadic slope-tail criterion for absolute continuity gives
No boundedness of is asserted here; the tail condition permits integrable densities that are unbounded.
Each is a bounded Borel measurable function of , including the specified value at . Therefore is an adapted process for and consists of integrable random variables.
Fix an atom of a sigma-algebra in with positive probability, corresponding to the dyadic interval , with . By the uniform distribution, each half has conditional probability . The conditional expectation of on that atom is therefore
The middle values cancel. On the zero-probability atom the conditional expectation can be chosen as zero, agreeing with our version of . Hence
so is a martingale. This is the dyadic slope martingale associated with the Lipschitz function .