Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2001 iii Paper 21 6 b Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-14
When paths move only by jumps of size , there is neither a Gaussian component nor a continuous drift. The Lévy measure is supported on and has finite mass because these points are bounded away from zero. The process is therefore a Compound Poisson process, expressible as a difference of independent Poisson processeswhere the rates are respectively. The martingale assumptions implyHence . The embedded jump chain is a simple symmetric random walk, and the total jump rate is one. In particular,This is the symmetric Skellam distribution, with the explicit mass functionFor , sum the joint probabilities of ; for , interchange the two variables. The characteristic function is , consistent with the rate-one symmetric Poisson difference process. The condition that paths move only by jumps is essential to exclude a separate continuous component.