Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge / 2018 / iii / Paper 202 / 6 / iii / Solution

The limit is in probability, or more strongly in uniform convergence on compacts in probability; a pathwise limit for every continuous local martingale is not implicit. The original PDF uses $\lceil t{2}^n\rceil$, whereas the supplied TeX changes this to $\lfloor t{2}^n\rfloor$; both versions have the same limit by continuity.

Put $\delta =2^{-n}$ and $m=\lfloor t/\delta \rfloor$. For the completed intervals, the algebraic identityseparates a left-point sum from a quadratic covariation sum.

The results from stochastic calculus used are these: predictable left-step approximations to a continuous adapted integrand converge in their Itô integrals in uniform convergence on compacts in probability; and products of increments of continuous semimartingales on deterministic partitions of an interval with vanishing mesh converge to their quadratic covariation in the same sense. The first follows after localization from the Itô isometry and the Doob L2 maximal inequality, since the integrand approximations converge uniformly on compact intervals; the second is the deterministic-partition characterization of quadratic covariation.

Thus the two sums converge to ${\int }_0^t{Y}_{s}d{X}_s$ and $\frac{1}{2}⟨Y,X{⟩}_t$. For the ceiling convention, at most one additional full interval extends past $t$; on $[0,T+1]$ its absolute contribution is at most ${\sup }_{s\le T+1}|Y_s|$ times the modulus of continuity of $X$ at scale $\delta$, which tends to zero almost surely. Therefore