Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2016 iii Paper 202 6 b Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-06
We prove the extension from spatial test functions to time-dependent test functions for a diffusion martingale problem directly, without assuming a driving Brownian motion. Fix and a deterministic partition . For each , lies in . The defining martingale problem givesCall the sum . Telescoping separates the spatial and temporal changes:The sample path is uniformly continuous on and has compact range. Joint continuity of , the spatial first derivatives, and the spatial second derivatives therefore gives, as the mesh tends to zero,almost surely. For bounded and bounded derivatives of , both integrals are uniformly bounded on this finite horizon, as are the two endpoint terms. The dominated convergence theorem permits passage to the limit in the expectation against . Thus is integrable and for every , provingAdaptation and continuity follow from the formula, so is a continuous martingale. Under the more general integrability condition in part (a), the same proof uses an integrable bound proportional to ; positive semidefiniteness bounds every off-diagonal entry by the diagonal ones. With only local assumptions this reasoning proves a local martingale, and an integrability hypothesis is needed to upgrade that conclusion.