Past exam of the options II course of the University of Oxford / 2011 / M / M4 / c / Solution

At a fixed index, independence and uniformity giveThe match indicators are independent Bernoulli trials. Thus the waiting times between successive matches are independent geometric variables on $\{1,2,\dots \}$ with success probability $p$. Their moment-generating function isprovided $(1-p)e^t<1$. Since $S_m$ is the sum of $m$ such waiting times,For $k>1$, the finite domain is $t<\log (k/(k-1))$. For $k=1$, every index is a match, so $S_m=m$ deterministically and the moment-generating function is $e^{mt}$ for every real $t$.