Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge / 2024 / iii / Paper 203 / 4 / d

Part (c), iterated over disjoint nested annuli, gives independent increments, and the law $X_s-X_t\stackrel{d}{=}{X}_{s-t}$ gives stationary increments. Every finite vector is jointly Gaussian by the definition of the Zero-boundary Gaussian free field, and a continuous version was assumed. Moreover $X_0=0$, because the field has zero boundary values.

Thus $X$ is a continuous centered Gaussian process with stationary increments and independent increments. Its variance is a continuous additive function on the nonnegative real numbers, so $\mathrm{Var}(X_t)={\sigma }^{2}t$ for some ${\sigma }^2\ge 0$. The Gaussian-process characterization of Brownian motion now givesfor standard Brownian motion $B$. This is the Circle-average process of the Gaussian free field is Brownian motion.