Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2003 iii Paper 33 3 Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-14
For the first equation use an integrating factor. The Itô product rule gives , soThe Gaussianity of deterministic Brownian stochastic integrals follows by approximating its deterministic integrand by step functions and using the Itô isometry. HenceThe variance is positive also when , since numerator and denominator then both have negative sign. This is the explicit Ornstein-Uhlenbeck solution with initial value one.
For the second equation, take independent standard Brownian motions and define . The associated planar Brownian motion does not hit the origin. To check this rather than silently differentiate at zero, stop its radius upon hitting or , with . The function is harmonic on that annulus, so the optional stopping theorem givesLet : hitting zero before has probability zero. Taking integer covers every possible finite hitting time, since continuous paths are bounded on compact intervals. Thus planar Brownian motion avoids a fixed point and stays positive.
The radial Itô formula is now legitimate and givesThe sum of the two martingale terms has bracket and starts at zero, so it is a standard Brownian motion by Lévy characterization of Brownian motion. Thus with . The law-determination assumption permitted in the question identifies the law of with that of this dimension-two Bessel process. For independent standard normal random variables ,This is the two-dimensional Bessel transition law and answers the requested distribution without needing a special-function density.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2005 iii Paper 38 1 b Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-14
For times and real coefficients , the linear combination of coordinates isThe Gaussianity of deterministic Brownian stochastic integrals makes this a centered normal random variable. Indeed step-function approximations give linear combinations of independent normal increments, and the Itô isometry gives convergence in ; their characteristic functions converge to that of a normal variable with the limiting variance. Since every linear combination is normal, the coordinate vector is a Gaussian random vector. Appending the deterministic coordinate preserves that property, so is a centered Gaussian process on .
For , the covariance version of the Itô isometry givesAt the covariance is zero because , agreeing with the formula. Thus the Brownian bridge covariance kernel isIts finite-dimensional distributions identify it as a Brownian bridge; continuity at the terminal endpoint is established next.