Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge / 2015 / iii / Paper 30 / 5 / b / Solution

The angle is a bounded local martingale, hence a uniformly integrable martingale. The Martingale convergence theorem gives an almost sure and $L^1$ limit ${\Theta }_{\infty }\in [-\pi /2,\pi /2]$ withIt must lie at an endpoint. Indeed, the Itô isometry and boundedness giveThus the bracket integral is finite almost surely. If the angle converged to an interior point, its squared cosine would eventually be bounded below by a positive constant, forcing this integral to be infinite. ConsequentlyThis proves endpoint convergence of a bounded angle diffusion.

Let $p_x=\mathbb{P}({\Theta }_{\infty }=\pi /2)$. Since $X_t=\tan {\Theta }_t$, this is exactly $\mathbb{P}(X_t\to +\infty )$, and the other endpoint means $X_t\to -\infty$. Taking expectations gives