Suppose the instantaneous forward rate field has mean and covariance , with deterministic initial curve and suitable integrability and maturity regularity. Its discounted zero-coupon bond prices are martingales exactly when the displayed mean identity holds. Put
The discounted bond price is , where is the integrated Gaussian forward-rate process. Its conditional Gaussian exponential expectation gives the equivalent identity . Differentiating this in maturity gives the displayed restriction. Conversely, integrating that restriction on the diagonal and along the current curve recovers the half-variance identity, by symmetry of the covariance over the maturity square. The Gaussian exponential martingale with deterministic variance then verifies the full conditional martingale property. This formulation does not require a time derivative of .
Use for the fixed maturity and for the observation time. The original PDF's discounting uses the instantaneous forward rate over and the short rate over . Let be the centered Gaussian forward-rate field, and define
Assume the covariance and mean have the regularity needed for these mean-square integrals and the maturity differentiation below. Splitting at shows that the discounted zero-coupon bond price is
This integrated Gaussian forward-rate process has deterministic variance
Its independent increments hold relative to the entire specified filtration. Indeed, if and , the covariance between and any earlier is the integral of
Since uncorrelated jointly Gaussian variables are independent, the increment is independent of every finite family of earlier observations and hence of their generated sigma-algebra. The increment has normal distribution with mean zero and variance . Also because .
The Gaussian moment-generating function now gives
Therefore the Gaussian forward-rate covariance drift restriction is exactly the deterministic condition
It turns into a Gaussian exponential martingale with deterministic variance. The subparts establish the requested equivalent descriptions from this common calculation.