Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge / 2008 / iii / Paper 34 / 3 / b / Solution

A filtration $({\mathcal{F}}_n{)}_{n\ge 0}$ on a probability space is an increasing sequence of sigma-algebras contained in $\mathcal{F}$: ${\mathcal{F}}_n\subseteq {\mathcal{F}}_{n+1}$. A real stochastic process $(X_n)$ is a martingale for this filtration if $X_n$ is ${\mathcal{F}}_n$-measurable, $\mathbb{E}|X_n|<\infty$, andThe first condition is adaptedness; the tower property of conditional expectation then gives $\mathbb{E}[X_n\mid {\mathcal{F}}_m]=X_m$ whenever $m\le n$.

The almost-sure martingale convergence theorem states that if a real martingale satisfies ${\sup }_n\mathbb{E}|X_n|<\infty$, then some integrable random variable $X_{\infty }$ satisfies $X_n\to X_{\infty }$ almost surely. The more general almost sure submartingale convergence theorem needs only ${\sup }_n\mathbb{E}[X_n^{+}]<\infty$ for a submartingale. In particular, a nonnegative martingale converges to a finite integrable limit almost surely, because its expected value is constant. Mere boundedness in the L1 norm does not imply convergence in L1. The stronger uniformly integrable martingale convergence theorem gives both almost-sure convergence and convergence in L1 when the martingale is uniformly integrable.