Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2004 iii Paper 30 3 d Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-14
The printed pathwise conclusion is false without specifying the initial value. We first prove exactly what the hypotheses do imply, by stationary drift saturation.
Stationarity gives . The Itô formula yieldsThe stochastic integral is a true square-integrable martingale on every finite horizon, since . Also by the Cauchy-Schwarz inequality. Taking expectations therefore givesEvery integrand is nonnegative, so for almost every . For those times,It follows that for almost every time and outcome. Equality of these integrable drift terms gives the exact solutionThus solves the same equation, but stationarity has not identified its initial random variable with .
For an explicit counterexample, takeThis is adapted to . Its independent normal initial value and Brownian noise make it a centered stationary Gaussian process with covariance , exactly as for . Hence and , satisfying every printed hypothesis. Nevertheless , which is nonzero almost surely for every finite .
The corrected result is indistinguishability if one adds almost surely. Without that addition, there is equality in law of the stationary Ornstein-Uhlenbeck processes, not necessarily equality of their coupled paths. To see that the initial law is forced, independence of Brownian increments from and stationarity give, for its characteristic function ,Letting proves . This is the distinction captured by same-noise stationary Ornstein-Uhlenbeck processes.