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Hi,

I've started studying brownian motion, and gathered some books on the subject but something looks odd to me : All of the presentations I've seen this far consider the continuity of the brownian motion as an axiom.

Well, if you recast the brownian motion in the wider setting of Levy processes with stable independent increments on non-overlapping intervals then this is a very special properties of the brownian motion. Considering that, there should be a way to prove this almost sure continuity property as a consequence of the other axioms, namely :

1. W(0) = 0.
2. For all $0 \le t_1 \le t_2 \le t_3 \le t_4$, $W(t_2) - W(t_1)$ and $W(t_4) - W(t_3)$ are independent random variables.
3. For all $0 \le t_1 \le t_2$ , $W(t_2) - W(t_1)$ is normally distributed with mean 0 and variance $\sigma^2\,(t_2 - t_1)$.

The third axiom being the one which is special to brownian motion. The normality condition entering it appears to be sufficient to tame any wild excursion from continuity.

What motivates my question is that when doing a numerical simulation on equally spaced time intervals using only these axioms, the continuity property is rather convincingovious. Especially when one refines the simulation by taking smaller and smaller time intervals.

While the result seems experimentally obvious I can't find anything that doesn't state it as an axiom.

A typical proof could be to look at the probability that the brownian motion on $[0, 1]$ doesn't get too far from the nodes of the simulation in between them.

For instance uniform continuity could be :

The probability of a brownian motion escaping the nodes farther than say $\delta > 0$ is lower than any $\gamma > 0$ provided that the steps of the simulation is smaller than some $\epsilon$ depending on both $\delta$ and $\gamma$.

Does that seems sensible to anyone ? Does anyone know of such result in the literature ?

Any help or reference will be greatly appreciated.

2 spelling

Hi,

I've started studying brownian motion, and gathered some books on the subject but something looks odd to me : All of the presentations I've seen this far consider the continuity of the brownian motion as an axiom.

Well, if you recast the brownian motion in the wider setting of Levy processes with stable independent increments on non-overlapping intervals then this is a very special properties of the brownian motion. Considering that, there should be a way to prove this almost sure continuity property as a consequence of the other axioms, namely :

1. W(0) = 0.
2. For all $0 \le t_1 \le t_2 \le t_3 \le t_4$, $W(t_2) - W(t_1)$ and $W(t_4) - W(t_3)$ are independent random variables.
3. For all $0 \le t_1 \le t_2$ , $W(t_2) - W(t_1)$ is normally distributed with mean 0 and variance $\sigma^2\,(t_2 - t_1)$.

The third axiom being the one which is special to brownian motion. The normality condition entering it appears to be sufficient to tame any wild excursion from continuity.

What motivates my question is that when doing a numerical simulation on equally spaced time intervals using only these axioms, the continuity property is rather convincing. Especially when one refines the simulation by taking smaller and smaller time intervals.

While the result seems experimentally obvious I can't find anything that doesn't state it as an axiom.

A typical proof cool could be to look at the probability that the brownian motion on $[0, 1]$ doesn't get too far from the nodes of the simulation in between them.

For instance uniform continuity could be :

The probability of a brownian motion escaping the nodes farther than say $\delta > 0$ is lower than any $\gamma > 0$ provided that the steps of the simulation is smaller than some $\epsilon$ depending on both $\delta$ and $\gamma$.

Does that seems sensible to anyone ? Does anyone know of such result in the literature ?

Any help or reference will be greatly appreciated.

1

# Any reference on Brownian Motion continuity

Hi,

I've started studying brownian motion, and gathered some books on the subject but something looks odd to me : All of the presentations I've seen this far consider the continuity of the brownian motion as an axiom.

Well, if you recast the brownian motion in the wider setting of Levy processes with stable independent increments on non-overlapping intervals then this is a very special properties of the brownian motion. Considering that, there should be a way to prove this almost sure continuity property as a consequence of the other axioms, namely :

1. W(0) = 0.
2. For all $0 \le t_1 \le t_2 \le t_3 \le t_4$, $W(t_2) - W(t_1)$ and $W(t_4) - W(t_3)$ are independent random variables.
3. For all $0 \le t_1 \le t_2$ , $W(t_2) - W(t_1)$ is normally distributed with mean 0 and variance $\sigma^2\,(t_2 - t_1)$.

The third axiom being the one which is special to brownian motion. The normality condition entering it appears to be sufficient to tame any wild excursion from continuity.

What motivates my question is that when doing a numerical simulation on equally spaced time intervals using only these axioms, the continuity property is rather convincing. Especially when one refines the simulation by taking smaller and smaller time intervals.

While the result seems experimentally obvious I can't find anything that doesn't state it as an axiom.

A typical proof cool be to look at the probability that the brownian motion on $[0, 1]$ doesn't get too far from the nodes of the simulation in between them.

For instance uniform continuity could be :

The probability of a brownian motion escaping the nodes farther than say $\delta > 0$ is lower than any $\gamma > 0$ provided that the steps of the simulation is smaller than some $\epsilon$ depending on both $\delta$ and $\gamma$.

Does that seems sensible to anyone ? Does anyone know of such result in the literature ?

Any help or reference will be greatly appreciated.