The laws on continuous paths of a standard Brownian motion and a Brownian motion with drift are mutually singular measures on the whole half-line. The event has full measure for the former and zero measure for the latter by the strong law for Brownian motion. On every fixed finite horizon, their laws are equivalent by the Girsanov theorem. The finite-horizon densities tend to zero almost surely while retaining expectation one, so they lack uniform integrability over all time.
The strong law for Brownian motion gives . For every , eventually . Integrating these bounds, taking logarithms and dividing by squeezes the growth rate between and . Let . The corresponding inverse clock grows like .
Apply the Itô formula to . The time derivative contributes , and the quadratic-variation correction contributes another . Thus
Both the drift and diffusion coefficient are globally Lipschitz. The global existence theorem for stochastic differential equations with Lipschitz coefficients gives a unique strong stochastic solution for a fixed driving Brownian motion and initial value; in particular pathwise uniqueness holds. The explicit solution is strictly positive.
Write . This is a continuous local martingale with
The strong law for Brownian motion gives almost surely, so , , and . The Dambis-Dubins-Schwarz theorem therefore supplies a Brownian motion in the inverse-clock filtration with for all . Finally , hence . Integrating the stochastic equation gives
The infinite clock lifetime verifies that this Brownian motion is defined for every nonnegative clock time without an additional extension.
First prove the strong law for Brownian motion, with probability one. For each , the Gaussian tail bound gives
By stationary increments and the Brownian reflection principle, followed by the same tail bound,
Both bounds are summable in . The First Borel-Cantelli lemma therefore implies that, eventually, both quantities inside these probability events are at most . For this gives . Intersect over a sequence of positive rational tending to zero to obtain the asserted continuous-time limit.
On this one almost sure event,
so for and to for . For each real , the path is eventually strictly on the corresponding side of . Hence
The same event works simultaneously for all levels , giving the requested transience of Brownian motion with drift.
Use the positive exponential Brownian martingale
The strong law for Brownian motion, , makes its exponent tend to and hence . If , then . Part (b) gives, for ,
Thus the maximum is exponentially distributed with rate :
There is no atom at zero, by letting in the tail. This is the infinite-horizon crossing probability for Brownian motion with negative drift.
The strong law for Brownian motion says almost surely. For sufficiently large , therefore , giving
Thus has finite terminal quadratic variation. Stopping when its bracket reaches each integer makes it an -bounded martingale, which converges by the martingale convergence theorem. Patching these limits shows that
is a well-defined finite almost sure limit. This construction uses local square integrability; a global bound is not required.
Conditional on the entire path, the independent Brownian motion still supplies a centered Gaussian stochastic integral, with variance . The conditionally Gaussian stochastic integral with an independent integrator therefore has no atoms, even after averaging over .
Also almost surely. For each fixed , the relation then gives, outside the null event ,
Part (b) identifies the cumulative distribution:
Hence has the Standard Cauchy distribution. This establishes the Cauchy law of an infinite-horizon Brownian exponential integral.
Figure 1.
Standard Cauchy density and cumulative distribution, with the latter equal to the positive-divergence probability
. Details.
The Itô formula for gives the stochastic differential equation
Write for its continuous local martingale part. Its clock is the quadratic variation
Because , is strictly increasing. For , its inverse satisfies and . The Dambis-Dubins-Schwarz theorem, or the Lévy characterization of Brownian motion after the optional time-change theorem, makes a Brownian motion for the time-changed filtration. With ,
This is the Bessel process equation with dimension , on the positive stochastic interval. This establishes the Exponential Brownian-to-Bessel time change.
The lifetime convention is important: the inverse is defined only for . If , the strong law for Brownian motion gives , so exponentially and . Then as , and this is its first hit of zero after continuous extension. If the clock diverges by the same strong law. If it diverges by infinite occupation time of one-dimensional Brownian motion on a bounded interval, since is bounded below there. Thus the lifetime is infinite when . Negative dimensions are interpreted by the same positive-state equation killed at zero; no post-zero Bessel process behavior is asserted.
No absolutely continuous probability measure can remove this nonzero drift on the whole half-line. By the strong law for Brownian motion, the event
has -probability one. If , absolute continuity of measures gives . But if is a Brownian motion under , the same strong law for Brownian motion gives with -probability one. Since , these two limiting events are disjoint, a contradiction.
This is infinite-horizon singularity of Brownian motion with constant drift. The finite-horizon densities are consistent on but cannot define a globally absolutely continuous measure with the requested property. Indeed,
because . Hence lacks uniform integrability on . A drifted law does exist on canonical path space, but it is mutually singular with Wiener measure on the infinite-horizon path sigma-algebra.
For , use the power transformation on the positive stochastic interval. The Itô formula, with , gives
Thus simultaneously for . The right side reaches zero almost surely by recurrence of one-dimensional Brownian motion, and the same positive-path contradiction proves cannot exceed that Brownian first-passage time. This establishes the finite lifetime threshold for a power diffusion throughout .
At , the solution is the geometric Brownian motion
It is finite and positive at every finite time. On every compact time interval it has a positive minimum, so the hitting times of tend to infinity. Although the strong law for Brownian motion implies as , this is not a finite lifetime. Therefore
The power transformation is a rescaled Lamperti transform; at the corresponding transformation is the logarithm. No claim about pathwise uniqueness after adjoining the boundary zero is needed: the coefficients are locally Lipschitz continuous inside the positive domain, which is the domain of the given maximal local solution of a stochastic differential equation.
The lifetime of the time-changed process is
By the strong law for Brownian motion, almost surely. If , the exponent is eventually at most , so the integral is finite. If , it is eventually positive and grows linearly; if , the recurrence of one-dimensional Brownian motion makes spend infinite total time in, for example, , so the integral is infinite. Consequently