Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2004 iii Paper 30 4 b Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-14
For , the bracket in the explicit solution is positive and increasing. Its integral is finite on every finite interval because is continuous and strictly positive there. The same is immediate from the exponential formula for . Neither solution can reach zero on a finite interval. Hence both cases have global existence almost surely.
For , put and . The explosion threshold for a Bernoulli stochastic differential equation isIf the threshold is reached at a finite time, is positive and finite, and as .
When , and deterministically. When , choose a constant large enough that . The eventhas positive probability: the first part is a Gaussian tail event, the second has positive probability by the Brownian reflection principle, and they are independent. On this event throughout , so . Thus and global existence is not almost sure. We concludeThis argument asserts positive explosion probability for , not certain explosion. Indeed almost surely makes finite in that case; that observation does not remove the positive chance that its value exceeds the threshold.