The sharp constant for the Burkholder–Davis–Gundy inequality and non-smooth pasting

Abstract

We revisit the celebrated family of BDG-inequalities introduced by Burkholder, Gundy (Acta Math. 124 (1970) 249–304) and Davis (Israel J. Math. 8 (1970) 187–190) for continuous martingales. For the inequalities $\mathbb{E}[\tau^{\frac{p}{2}}]\leq C_{p}\mathbb{E}[(B^{*}(\tau))^{p}]$ with $0<p<2$ we propose a connection of the optimal constant $C_{p}$ with an ordinary integro-differential equation which gives rise to a numerical method of finding this constant. Based on numerical evidence, we are able to calculate, for $p=1$, the explicit value of the optimal constant $C_{1}$, namely $C_{1}=1.27267\ldots$ . In the course of our analysis, we find a remarkable appearance of “non-smooth pasting” for a solution of a related ordinary integro-differential equation.