Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2012 iii Paper 35 1 d iv Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-07
The time-changed diffusion has generator . For , its boundary hitting probability from a diffusion scale function isTo see this directly, stop the scale local martingale on and pass to . Exit from occurs in finite clock time: the scale density behaves as and the speed density as , so the usual scale-times-speed exit integral is finite at . More explicitly, with the finite-interval diffusion exit Green kernel givesThe equation follows by differentiation and the derivative jump at , so stopping the corresponding Itô identity gives this exit bound. The integrand near is ; elsewhere it is bounded. At large the drift is bounded, excluding explosion at infinity in finite clock time.
Here is why these exits describe the original swallowing event. In clock time,If hits at finite , its integrated stochastic differential equation shows : the Brownian term has a finite limit and both positive drift integrals must then have finite limits. Consequently , hits zero and stays positive. This gives .
Conversely is finite by part (b). If its clock ends at a finite value, the diffusion must hit ; an interior endpoint with positive would leave positive. If the clock runs forever without hitting , the standard one-dimensional scale classification gives escape to infinity whenever . This cannot represent a strict swallowing event, which has and . Hence the surviving event represents . This reasoning also explains why a simultaneous collision must be treated separately rather than assigned the boundary value at .
For , the scale is unbounded. The maximal inequality for a nonnegative supermartingale gives ; letting rules out escape. Finite-interval exit then forces a hit at . For , taking givesThe strict-event probability is also positive, since for finite .
For , first intersect the probability-one strict-order events over rational . The real boundary flow gives nondecreasing swallowing times on . For any , choose rational ; then . This proves the simultaneous assertionThe range is positive points, as in the definition of ; reflection reverses the ordering on the negative axis. At the printed endpoint , each fixed positive point has . Thus if equality of extended times is allowed, but there is no finite simultaneous-swallowing assertion there. The preceding formulas assume .