Charge-transfer efficiency Created 2026-10-18 Updated 2026-10-20
The charge-transfer efficiency is the fraction of a packet delivered into its intended next site or time slot in one transfer, under stated conditions. It is distinct from quantum efficiency, which concerns conversion of incident photons into collected charge carriers. Define the complementary inefficiency as .
In an original model with constant , let denote the mean number of original packet electrons still delivered on time after transfers. Assuming no reinjection into that packet,Repeated substitution proves the result; for different efficiencies the fraction is . For , a Taylor expansion of gives , while the simpler requires .
Choose and . For , the expected on-time output is electrons; for , it is . These are model means, so fractional electron counts do not describe an individual packet. Even a small per-transfer imperfection can imprint distance-dependent image errors.
If every original electron independently stays on time with probability , a fixed initial count gives a binomial distribution with variance . An initial Poisson distribution with mean instead gives an on-time Poisson distribution with mean and variance , by Poisson thinning. A deterministic attenuation formula alone does not specify noise. Real trapping can correlate packets and depends on timing, illumination and temperature; the independent constant-efficiency model then fails.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2001 iii Paper 27 1 Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-14
Where the moment-generating function is finite in a neighborhood of zero, define the cumulant-generating function and the th cumulant by . Differentiation givessince . Thus the first two cumulants are the mean and variance.
Conditional on , independence gives . Summing over the Poisson distribution yieldsHence the compound Poisson cumulants giveFor the moment statements, finite second moments suffice even when a moment-generating function does not exist near zero: conditioning gives . This distinguishes the raw second moment from the variance of an individual claim.
For a single flood, the law of total expectation and law of total variance similarly giveCondition on the number of floods and apply the same laws once more. All floods have these moments and are independent of , so the annual total satisfiesThe additional term is the variation in the number of entire flood clusters; it would be lost by treating individual claims as an ordinary Poisson stream.
For the annual count , its probability generating function isThis is the nested Poisson flood count. Differentiating, or conditioning on , gives and . Thus is not Poisson when , since its variance exceeds its mean. If either parameter is zero it is identically zero, a degenerate Poisson distribution.
Let be the number of valid claims in flood . Independent validity marking gives . Its generating function isso Poisson thinning gives . With validity independent also of claim amount, each claim contributes expected paid amount . Therefore the annual expected payment is . The independent-mark assumption is needed for this multiplication; a size-dependent invalidity rule would require the joint expected value of amount and validity instead.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2002 ia Paper 2 10F b Solution Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-10-14
A Poisson distribution with parameter has probability generating function . The preceding part gives , the probability generating function of a Poisson distribution with parameter . To prove independence, retain both counts:Consequently the joint probability generating function factors asComparing the coefficients of proves that the joint probabilities are the products of the marginal probabilities. Hence and are independent, with distributions and . This is Poisson thinning, including the degenerate counts when or .
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2006 iii Paper 35 6 Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-14
A Markov jump process, considered up to its explosion time, is an adapted càdlàg piecewise-constant process whose conditional future law given depends only on its current state. Describe its rates by an off-diagonal kernel with finite total rate . In state the holding time has the exponential distribution with this rate, followed by a destination distributed as ; a zero-rate state is absorbing. Its Markov jump-process generator acts byThe Markov property must hold relative to the specified filtration, not merely the natural filtration: future-revealing information could change the jump compensator.
Let count jumps, marked by their destination states. For this jump measure of a Markov jump process, the predictable compensator isThe compensated random-measure theorem says that a predictable with gives a true martingaleThe same statement holds locally when that expected integrability is obtained after localization. The compensator identity applied to , for , shows that each increment has zero conditional expectation. Taking gives the generator local martingale . This states the integrability conditions in the compensated jump-measure local martingale result explicitly.
For the birth-process claim first take the customary fixed initial state . Write , and . The compensator of is , whose integrand may equivalently use because jump times have zero Lebesgue measure. A birth multiplies by , so the jump product rule givesFor an explicit localization, stop at with . Up to that time the statewise rates are bounded by the maximum of the finitely many rates below , the jump count is bounded, and and its compensated-integral integrand are bounded on the finite stopped horizon. The compensated-measure theorem therefore makes each stopped process a true martingale. The times increase to the explosion lifetime (or infinity if there is no explosion), proving is a local martingale on for every real .
Now suppose uniformly. For , propose candidate births at the times of a rate- Poisson process, accepting each with probability using fresh independent uniform marks. While the state is fixed, Poisson thinning gives a holding time with the required exponential distribution of rate ; accepted births have exactly the prescribed law. Thus there can be no explosion, and the true birth count is stochastically dominated by a Poisson random variable of mean . In particular,The case is constant and immediate. For every fixed horizon and all , including localization times,This is one integrable dominating variable for the entire stopped family. Conditional dominated convergence removes the localization and provesso the exponential martingale of a pure birth process is a genuine martingale for uniformly bounded rates. Only uniform integrability on each finite horizon is asserted; it need not be uniformly integrable over infinite time.
For a random initial state, the same proof requires . The source does not explicitly specify the initial distribution, so that qualification cannot be dropped: take constant rate one and an independent initial law . For , already , precluding even the integrability in the definition of a martingale. The fixed-initial-state interpretation above supplies the intended complete proof; bounded rates alone do not remedy an arbitrary heavy-tailed initial law.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2006 ii Paper 4 26J b Solution Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-10-14
By Poisson thinning, the first arrival times of the coupon types are independent exponential distribution of rates . Completion requires all those arrivals, so andTo relate time to count rigorously, let be the successive independent exponential waiting times of mean . The completion count depends only on the coupon labels, which are independent of all . ThereforeNonnegative integration justifies the sum, avoiding any unproved optional-stopping assertion. Thus the Poissonized coupon completion time and count identity is . Changing variables in the tail integral giveswhich depends only on the type probabilities, not . These expectations are finite when all ; a missing type makes both infinite and completion impossible.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2010 ii Paper 3 26I a Solution Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-10-14
Assume the first-fork choices are independent Bernoulli routings, as in Poisson thinning. Put . Cars assigned to A form a Poisson process of rate , also an ordinary renewal process with independent exponential holding times of rate . The stream to the second fork is an independent Poisson process of rate .
B receives its odd-numbered arrivals. Its initial delay is exponential of rate , followed by independent Erlang distributions of shape two and rate between successive B arrivals. Thus B is a delayed renewal process, not Poisson. C receives the even-numbered arrivals: its first and all subsequent holding times are independent Erlang, so C is an ordinary renewal process, not Poisson. Their holding-time density and survivor are and . Both have asymptotic rate ; equality of these mean rates with A does not make the processes Poisson.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2012 iii Paper 33 3 d Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-07
Use the independent-mark interpretation: the Brownian motions attached to the atoms are independent of one another and of the initial Poisson random measure. Fix and defineConditionally on the initial atoms, each atom is retained as a dangerous atom if its own path meets the target by time . These tests are independent, with position-dependent retention probability . The permitted Poisson thinning property makes the dangerous atoms a Poisson random measure of intensity .
Its total intensity is computed without invoking a marking or displacement theorem. The event in the definition of says that belongs toBy the Tonelli theorem,Symmetry of Brownian motion gives as processes. It therefore identifies the last expectation with , where the sign of the deterministic path is unchanged. This swept set is a Wiener sausage with an added deterministic path.
The total intensity is finite on each bounded time interval. To see this explicitly, write and . The sausage is contained in a ball of radius . On a finite time grid, splitting according to the first crossing of a positive level by a one-dimensional Brownian motion shows that the chance of ending above , conditional on the crossing, is at least : the remaining independent increment is symmetric. Thus the grid maximum exceeds with probability at most twice the final Gaussian upper tail. Dense grids and continuity give the same bound for the path maximum. Applying this to each coordinate and its negative givesThe last inequality follows from and minimizing the exponential Markov bound. Integration of this tail gives finite moments of of every positive order, so .
There are consequently only finitely many dangerous atoms on each compact time interval, almost surely. For closed balls, continuity of the paths makes each finite hitting-time infimum attained. The event is therefore the absence of dangerous atoms up to time .
The open-ball convention has the same survival probability at each fixed . Indeed for any compact path range , the difference between its closed and open radius-one neighborhoods is the shell , which has zero Lebesgue measure. To see this, choose a nearest for a shell point . For every sufficiently small , the ball of radius centered at lies in the open neighborhood and inside the ball of radius about . Thus the shell has a fixed proportional hole at every scale; the Lebesgue density theorem forces its measure to be zero. By the Tonelli theorem, closed-touch and open-entry retention probabilities have equal integrals. Independent thinning therefore gives no atom that touches only the boundary before this fixed horizon, almost surely. This also excludes a difference at an open-entry infimum equal to .
The zero-count probability of a Poisson distribution is , and henceThis survival among independently moving Poisson traps formula has been derived using only independent thinning and the defining Poisson zero-count probability, with the expectation/volume step supplied by Tonelli's theorem.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2013 iii Paper 28 2 Solution 2026-10-07
For an aggregate claims model, let denote one claim size, with expected value and variance . The total is zero when the claim count is zero. Given , independence givesThe law of total expectation and law of total variance, together with for a Poisson distribution, implyThe raw second moment appears because the random count itself contributes to the variance.
Conditional on , the moment-generating function of the sum is . Averaging with the Poisson distribution therefore gives the compound Poisson distribution transformThis is valid wherever is finite. Finite first and second moments alone do not ensure positive exponential moments; for positive claims the corresponding Laplace transform always exists.
For the independent portfolios put and . Their Poisson distribution counts add to a Poisson distribution with parameter . By Poisson-multinomial conditioning, conditional on the total count the first risk count has a binomial distribution with parameters , and the second is the remaining count. Thus one can generate the same total loss by drawing independent risk labels with these weights, then drawing each claim from its label's law. The merged severity has mixture distributionIt follows that has a compound Poisson distribution with count parameter and this severity law. This is the fixed-year version of Poisson superposition of insurance portfolios. Its expected value and variance areAlternatively, multiplying the two independent aggregate Laplace transforms yields wherever finite, confirming the same compound Poisson distribution.
For the retained compound Poisson aggregate under per-claim reinsurance, replace each claim by its retained payment . Assume the retention is measurable, with as usual. The count parameter remains , and the severity law is the pushforward measure of the mixture severity under . Thus the retained compound Poisson aggregate has a compound Poisson distribution with that transformed severity andIts moment-generating function is on its finite domain. For a general retention , zero retained payments can occur and are allowed as compound-Poisson marks; they may equivalently be removed by Poisson thinning. The two specified contracts retain strictly positive payments for strictly positive claims.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2015 iii Paper 35 3 d Solution 2026-10-06
Assume individual incubation delays are independent of the Inhomogeneous Poisson process of infections and of one another. This marking assumption is needed in addition to specifying a marginal incubation density.
In the discrete cohort model let be the independent infection counts. Mark each infection by its eventual onset interval. For cohort , the categories have probabilities for observed intervals, with the remaining probability assigned to onsets outside the window. Poisson thinning makes the counts in these categories mutually independent Poisson random variables with means . One direct proof is their probability generating function:Different cohorts are independent. Summing their counts therefore gives independent Poisson onset counts in disjoint intervals:The same argument applies exactly in continuous time by the Independent marking theorem for Poisson point processes and mapping each marked infection to its onset time. The endpoint model approximates its means; its independent-Poisson conclusion is exact within that discrete model. A fixed cohort size would instead induce negatively correlated onset-bin counts, so the Poisson process infection assumption matters.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2018 ii Paper 1 28J Solution Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-10-03
An Inhomogeneous Poisson process with intensity is a counting process with , independent increments, andThe continuity and positivity of make strictly increasing.
For and ,has a Poisson distribution with meanDisjoint increments remain independent, so is a homogeneous rate-one Poisson process. Taking gives , and henceThis is the time change of an inhomogeneous Poisson process.
For the bicycle model, let an arrival occur at time and have velocity . At time its position is , so it lies in the first miles exactly whenConditional on its arrival time, independently marking the bicycle by whether this event occurs is Poisson thinning. Therefore the desired count is Poisson with meanThus
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2023 ia Paper 2 9F b Solution Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-10-03
By Poisson thinning, allocating a Poisson population independently and uniformly among days gives independent Poisson counts. Hence
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2023 ii Paper 3 27J b Solution Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-09-25
Let be the number of telephone lines in use. The memorylessness of the exponential distribution makes a continuous-time Markov chain, specifically the M-M-infinity queue with generator rates
Suppose and put . Each initial call is still active at time with the exponential survival probability , independently of the others. Their surviving number is thereforeA call arriving at time survives until with probability . By Poisson thinning, the number of surviving new calls is independent of and has lawHence in distribution. Multiplying the probability generating functions of the two independent random variables gives, for ,Equivalently, the transient distribution of an M-M-infinity queue iswith independent summands. As , the binomial term converges to zero and the Poisson mean tends to . Thereforewhich proves the stated large-time approximation.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2025 ii Paper 1 28L c Solution Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-10-03
A particle arriving at time survives until with probability . Independently retaining each Poisson arrival with this time-dependent probability is Poisson thinning. Hence the number alive at time is Poisson with meanThus
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2026 ii Paper 1 28K c Solution Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-09-25
An arrival at remains active with probability when , and zero later. By Poisson thinning, the detector count is Poisson with mean
The exponential series proves normalization of a probability distribution:Let and count the two labels. Conditional on , independent labeling gives a binomial distribution, so the joint probability mass function isEach bracket is a normalized Poisson distribution. Summing over therefore givesThe factorization also proves that and are independent random variables. This is Poisson thinning; the phrase about ignoring the other count refers to taking a marginal distribution, rather than fixing that count.
Independent marking with probability is Poisson thinning and gives a Poisson process of chip-buying arrivals, of rate per hour. Its first arrival time therefore satisfiesFor example, its survival probability is , which also derives the thinning conclusion directly.
For each student, the probability of both falling asleep and dreaming about mathematics is . These indicators are independent across students, so the same Poisson thinning calculation gives, for the requested count ,Explicitly , the probability generating function of that Poisson distribution.
Let indicate that student stays awake. These indicators have independent Bernoulli distributions with parameter , and . The Poisson distribution has probability generating functionThe probability generating function of an independent random sum now givesRecognizing the Poisson distribution,This is Poisson thinning.
Given , there are exactly independent opportunities to stay awake, each with probability . HenceThe standard binomial distribution formulas are and . The Poisson distribution formulas are , , and therefore . By the law of total expectation,Using the definition of covariance,Thus and are not independent, even though the separate awake and asleep counts produced by Poisson thinning are independent.
Let be a nonnegative integer-valued random variable with finite expected value , and independently label each of its items with either of two equally likely labels. If the two resulting counts are independent random variables, then has a Poisson distribution. Indeed, its probability generating function obeys . With , iteration gives . Finite expected value gives , hence and . Conversely, Poisson thinning produces independent Poisson distributions for the two counts.