Distribution of "shifted stopping time" of Brownian motion

181 Views Asked by At

The task is to compute the distribution of

$$ \tau:=\inf\{t\ge1 : B_t=0\} $$ where $(B_t)_{t\ge0}$ is a standard Brownian motion.

We denote by $P^x$ the distribution of $x+B$.

Calculating the distribution under $P^0$ yields

$$ P^0(\tau\le t)=\dots=E^0[E^{B_1}[1_{\tau\le t-1}]]=\int_{-\infty}^{\infty}p_1(0,x)P^x(\tau\le t-1)dx= \\ \dots=\frac{2}{\pi}\arctan(\sqrt{t-1}) $$

where $p_t(a,y)$ is the density of the normal distribution with mean $a$ and variance $t$.

I get all the steps (which I left out here) except this one step in the middle where the double expectation is written as integral.

Can anyone explain where that comes from?

1

There are 1 best solutions below

0
On BEST ANSWER

Okay, we'll try writing this out more: For any fixed event $\omega$

$$ E^{B_1(\omega)}[1_{\tau\leq t-1}]=P^{B_1(\omega)}(\tau\leq t-1), $$ simply by definition of the Lesbegue Integral/expectation/what have you.

Note that $\omega\mapsto B_1(\omega)$ has the $\mathcal{N}(0,1)$ distribution.

Hence, \begin{align} E^0[E^{B_1}[1_{\tau\leq t-1}]]&=\int_{C([0,\infty))} E^{B_1(\omega)}[1_{\tau\leq t-1}]\textrm{d}P^0(\omega)=\int_{\mathbb{R}} E^x [1_{\tau\leq t-1}]\textrm{d} B_1(P^0)(x)\\ &=\int_{\mathbb{R}} E^x [1_{\tau\leq t-1}]\textrm{d}\mathcal{N}(0,1)(x)=\int_{\mathbb{R}} p_1(0,x) E^x [1_{\tau\leq t-1}]\textrm{d} x, \end{align} by the defining property of the push-forward measure. I've inserted $\omega$'s to highlight which part of the integral is actually the varaible.