Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2001 iii Paper 24 5 Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-14
Separate into a diffusion generator and the constant killing term . The appropriate stochastic differential equation and its explicit geometric Brownian motion solution areThe second-order term in the Itô formula cancels the drift of when ; if , the solution stays zero.
Fix a terminal time . Apply the Itô formula to for . Its drift isAfter localization this is a local martingale, and it is bounded because is bounded. It is therefore a true martingale. Taking expectations at its endpoints gives the Feynman-Kac formula
For and , the change of variable in the normal density produces the killed geometric Brownian heat kernel with respect to Lebesgue measure:For , an equivalent form isIn particular,The apparent missing in this last expression is absorbed into the completed square, together with the killing factor; it is not a transcription error. The total mass is , as expected for killing at rate . At the fundamental kernel is instead the measure ; it has no Radon-Nikodym derivative with respect to Lebesgue measure. Thus . At the kernel is , and continuity of bounded gives the initial condition. This also specifies the fundamental solution at the degenerate point omitted by a density-only formula.