On a class of exponential changes of measure for stochastic PDEs

Abstract: Given a mild solution $X$ to a semilinear stochastic partial differential equation (SPDE), we consider an exponential change of measure based on its infinitesimal generator $L$, defined in the topology of bounded pointwise convergence. The changed measure $\mathbb{P}^h$ depends on the choice of a function $h$ in the domain of $L$. In our main result, we derive conditions on $h$ for which the change of measure is of Girsanov-type. The process $X$ under $\mathbb{P}^h$ is then shown to be a mild solution to another SPDE with an extra additive drift-term. We illustrate how different choices of $h$ impact the law of $X$ under $\mathbb{P}^h$ in selected applications. These include the derivation of an infinite-dimensional diffusion bridge as well as the introduction of guided processes for SPDEs, generalizing results known for finite-dimensional diffusion processes to the infinite-dimensional case.