Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2003 iii Paper 33 4 Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-14
The original PDF specifies a bounded solution class , rather than the transcribed in the TeX. Write and fix a time . For Brownian motion starting at , considerThe Itô formula and ordinary product rule give a drift proportional to , which vanishes by the equation. Therefore is a local martingale. It is bounded on this horizon because is bounded and , so the bounded local martingale criterion makes it a true martingale. Its endpoint values are and , using . ConsequentlyThis proves the required Feynman-Kac formula with a bounded potential directly, and also gives uniqueness within the stated bounded solution class.
Let . By dominated convergence, in expectation. Continuity of and shows that exactly when throughout : a negative value at any time produces a nontrivial interval with positive integrand. For such an interval occurs immediately, so the limiting probability is zero. For , the Brownian reflection principle and the atom-free distribution of the running minimum giveFor this probability is zero: the reflection formula for levels , followed by , shows that Brownian motion goes below zero before almost surely. ThusThis is the soft killing limit for Brownian nonnegative survival. The assertion is pointwise for positive time, as requested; no claim of uniform convergence across the initial-time boundary is needed.