Let be the Cameron-Martin space of Wiener measure on : its elements start at zero, are absolutely continuous, and have square-integrable derivatives. For , let solve the controlled ordinary differential equation
The Stroock-Varadhan support theorem in the uniform topology is
One may equivalently take piecewise linear or smooth controls starting at zero. The skeleton uses the displayed vector fields, as appropriate for the Stratonovich equation.
Choose and work in the complete separable space of anchored geometric p-rough paths, with its rough path metric . The enhanced Brownian motion is a random element of this space. Its support of a measure is
We explain this Brownian support step using the permitted results about the enhancement. The almost-sure polygonal convergence proved in Question 3 gives the inclusion of its support in . Indeed, polygonal controls belong to , and the enhancement belongs to their closed signature closure almost surely. Hölder rough-path convergence at an exponent greater than implies -variation convergence: for the level- differences, sum the bound proportional to over a partition. Since , these sums are uniformly bounded and tend to zero with the Hölder distance.
For the reverse inclusion, use Brownian rough path small-ball positivity, namely for every , and Cameron-Martin quasi-invariance of enhanced Brownian motion. These are the Brownian input results used without proof here. For , the rough path translation is continuous and sends to . The law of is equivalent to that of . Given an open neighborhood of , continuity supplies an identity neighborhood mapped into . Small-ball positivity gives positive probability that ; equivalence of the two laws gives . Hence belongs to the Brownian support for every . Closedness of support proves the equality with .
Let be the state-path solution map of the rough differential equation driven by these vector fields, with the fixed initial value . The assumed identification of the Stratonovich solution says . Boundedness of the fields and all their derivatives ensures global existence and the regularity needed by the universal limit theorem. That theorem makes continuous from the rough-path space into the uniform state-path space. For a control signature, consistency with ordinary equations gives .
We use the elementary support under a continuous map identity
To prove it, a neighborhood of with has an open inverse image containing , and therefore positive measure. This puts , and its closure, in the image support. Conversely, the image closure is closed and has full image measure, since the original support has full measure. The minimal closed full-measure characterization from Question 4(i) gives the other inclusion.
Apply this identity to and the Brownian rough-path law. We obtain
Continuity and the definition of imply . The reverse inclusion after taking closures follows from . Therefore the last displayed support is exactly the uniform closure of the skeleton paths, proving the theorem.
Finally, piecewise constant and smooth approximations of converge in , hence in on a finite interval. Their controls converge in total variation, their signatures converge in the rough-path metric, and the universal limit theorem gives uniform convergence of the corresponding skeleton solutions. This proves the stated equivalence of the control classes.
Work on a finite interval with a fixed initial point . To give a clean global statement, assume are bounded vector fields with bounded continuous derivatives through order three. Consider the Stratonovich integral form of the stochastic differential equation
For a control in the Cameron-Martin space of Wiener measure,
let solve the controlled ordinary differential equation
The Stroock-Varadhan support theorem says, in the uniform metric on continuous paths,
Thus a path is in the support of a measure of the diffusion precisely when it can be approximated by these deterministic controlled trajectories. There is no ellipticity assumption: the allowed controls and vector fields already encode any restrictions on reachability.
The central point of the rough-path proof is that ordinary uniform approximation of the driver does not make the solution map continuous. Small planar loops can have small amplitude but accumulated area of fixed size, and vector fields with a nonzero Lie bracket detect that area. The correct driver is enhanced Brownian motion , including Lévy area. Fix . The universal limit theorem gives a continuous map
from the geometric -variation rough-path space to solution paths. It agrees with the controlled ordinary differential equation when . Adding the time coordinate, with its mixed integrals defined by integration against and integration by parts, incorporates without changing the continuity argument. This is the role of the universal limit theorem: it turns a support problem for all these nonlinear diffusions into a support problem for one enhanced driving process.
For , the rough differential equation is the stated Stratonovich equation. Its second-order increment includes
Replacing the Stratonovich integral in the second level by its Itô integral expression contributes , which is exactly the Stratonovich-to-Itô correction. Polygonal convergence from Question 3 and the universal limit theorem therefore give the Wong-Zakai approximation: the ordinary equations driven by converge to this Stratonovich diffusion.
It remains to establish the support of enhanced Brownian motion:
One inclusion follows immediately from Question 3. Every polygonal belongs to , and almost surely in the rough path metric. Since is closed, almost surely, whence its support is contained in . This alone does not prove the reverse inclusion: convergence of random approximations does not automatically give positive mass near every control.
For that inclusion, take dyadic mesh and write
On each grid interval is a pinned Brownian bridge. The bridges are mutually independent and independent of the grid values defining , by the Gaussian projection formula. Their canonical Stratonovich enhancement is therefore independent of . It is important to enhance the bridge residual itself, including its area, rather than infer area smallness from its uniform size.
The bridge enhancement tends to the zero rough path in probability. Here are the estimates behind this assertion. A bridge on an interval of length scales as times a unit bridge; its full antisymmetric area has mean zero, moments of order , and second moment of order . Since its endpoint displacement is zero, at grid points the cumulative second level is just the sum of the independent bridge areas. The Doob L2 maximal inequality gives
Partial intervals at the two ends contribute bridge increments and at most two local areas. Bridge scaling, Gaussian moment bounds and the corresponding iterated-integral estimates yield, uniformly in and for arbitrarily large ,
For an interval crossing several grid cells, the full-cell second levels are independent centered areas, whose sum has moments bounded by ; the two boundary pieces and their cross product satisfy the displayed bound as well. For an interval inside one cell these are the usual scaled bridge increment and area bounds. At each fixed pair both levels converge to zero in probability: the first-level variance is , and the second-level second moment is for sufficiently fine grids. The Kolmogorov continuity theorem gives uniformly bounded moments of a Hölder rough-path norm at any exponent . Tightness, convergence on a dense set of pairs and interpolation to now give in probability. Taking gives in probability.
Fix . Its polygonal interpolations converge to in the total-variation norm: their derivatives are the cell averages of , which converge in , hence in . Moreover . Thus in the rough path metric.
The rough path translation operation satisfies
For a bounded variation path , translation adds at level one and, at level two, the mixed terms
The second mixed term is defined by integration by parts. Their variation bounds show that translation is continuous, uniformly when is bounded, near the zero rough path. More explicitly the mixed second-level norms are bounded by a constant times ; the other new second-level term is the path signature of .
Given a ball of radius around , choose a sufficiently large so that is close and
for the small supplied by translation continuity. The relevant variation bounds can be chosen uniformly in , since the variations of the are uniformly bounded. For this fixed , the event has positive probability: the finite vector of Brownian increments has an everywhere positive Gaussian density, and sufficiently small deviations of its vertices imply this variation bound. These two events are independent. On their intersection, translation continuity gives . Every ball around therefore has positive probability. This proves lies in the support, and taking closures gives .
Finally, a continuous map between the separable path spaces in use satisfies
For one direction the measure is concentrated on its support. For the other, an open neighborhood of pulls back to an open neighborhood of a support point , which has positive measure. Using continuity of and the identity proves the boxed Stroock-Varadhan support theorem. This separates the two ingredients: the probabilistic support calculation for Brownian motion and area, and the deterministic continuity supplied by the universal limit theorem.
If the diffusion is instead presented as an Itô integral equation with drift , the controlled equation must use
Using unchanged in the controlled equation would generally give the wrong support description. The result above states explicit sufficient smoothness and nonexplosion assumptions; extensions to more general coefficients require the usual localization, not an unqualified assertion for arbitrary vector fields.