Showing a Brownian Motion Integral Is Gaussian
Summary
The document asks how to show directly that the time integral of Brownian motion is Gaussian and how to calculate its moment generating function. The response rewrites the integral using Itô’s formula as a combination of a Brownian value and a stochastic integral. It then time changes the stochastic integral so its quadratic variation matches time, invoking Lévy’s characterization to identify a Brownian motion.
The proposed reasoning uses Gaussianity of the component processes to conclude that their difference is Gaussian. This gives a route to the distributional claim, but the explanation is not a complete derivation of the moment generating function requested. In particular, Gaussian marginal distributions of two variables do not by themselves ensure their difference is Gaussian; their joint Gaussianity must also be established. The response also does not work through the covariance or explicitly recover the stated variance, so those steps would need additional justification.
Key ideas
- Itô’s formula rewrites the time integral of Brownian motion using a stochastic integral.
- A deterministic time change makes the stochastic integral’s quadratic variation equal to time.
- Lévy’s characterization identifies the resulting continuous local martingale as Brownian motion.
- To conclude that a difference is Gaussian, the joint Gaussianity of its components must be justified.
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Full text
# Show that Riemann integral over BM is gaussian process
# Show that Riemann integral over BM is gaussian process
I am looking at the process
$$X_t = \int_0^tB_udu$$
I know that this is a gaussian process with variance $t^3/3$. However, I would like to manually show the first statement directly.
For this, I would like to calculate the Laplace transform and show that it is the gaussian MGF. But the integral in the process makes that a tad difficult. My thought process that leads me to a slightly wrong result is:
We know that $B_t \sim \sqrt{t}B_1$. Thus: $$E\left[e^{\alpha X_t}\right] = E\left[e^{\alpha\int_0^tB_udu}\right] = E\left[e^{\alpha B_1\int_0^t\sqrt{u}du}\right],$$ which I can now integrate w.r.t. $B_1$. But that lands me at a MGF that is slightly off, so I suspect I can't do this transformation.
What would be the mathematically right way to calculate the MGF of $X$ here?
Edit: Just to be clear, of course you can do this with several ways, however I'm curious how to treat this specific situation - if possible at all.
## Answer by Daneel Olivaw (score 3)
https://quant.stackexchange.com/a/52930
We assume we work on a probability space $(\Omega,\mathcal{F},\mathbb{P})$ equipped with the filtration $\{\mathcal{F}_t\}_t$. By Itô's Lemma: $$B_t\text{d}t=\text{d}\left(tB_t\right)-t\text{d}B_t$$ Hence: $$X_t=tB_t-\int_0^tu\text{d}B_u$$ Let us define the function $\theta(t) :=\sqrt[3]{3t}$ and the filtration $\mathcal{F}^\theta_t:=\mathcal{F}_{\theta(t)}$. Introduce the following process: $$Y_t=\int_0^{\theta(t)}s\text{d}B_s$$ $Y_t$ is a local martingale with respect to the Brownian Motion with $Y_0=0$, hence its quadratic variation is: $$\begin{align} [Y,Y]_t=\int_0^{\theta(t)}s^2\text{d}s=\left[\frac{s^3}{3}\right]_0^{\theta(t)}=t \end{align}$$ It follows from Levy's characterization theorem that $Y_t$ is a Brownian Motion on the filtration $\mathcal{F}^\theta_t$ and thus is Gaussian.
Moreover, the time-changed Brownian Motion $\theta(t)B_{\theta(t)}$ also remains Gaussian with respect to the filtration $\mathcal{F}^\theta_t$. Indeed the function $\theta:\mathbb{R}^+\rightarrow \mathbb{R}^+$ is a mere deterministic bijection from $\mathbb{R}^+$ into itself with $\theta(0)=0$ hence $\theta(t)B_{\theta(t)}$ can be represented as $sB_s$ where $s\in\mathbb{R}^+$.
As a difference of Gaussian variables, $X_t$ is Gaussian with respect to the filtration $\mathcal{F}^\theta_t$ with same distribution as $\eta(t)+\xi(t)Z$, where $Z$ is a standard normal variable and $\eta(t), \xi(t)$ some deterministic functions of $t$. Changing back to the filtration $\mathcal{F}_t$, it is easy to see we are merely applying some deterministic transformation to the functions $\eta(t)$ and $\xi(t)$ thus $X_t$ remains Gaussian under the original filtration $\mathcal{F}_t$.
Background:
- Lévy’s Characterization of Brownian Motion
- Time-changed Brownian MotionShown in full with attribution under the source's licence. Licence: CC BY-SA 4.0 (Stack Exchange)
This summary was written by Stratmill's research agent from the original; it is not a copy of the source.