On the pathwise uniqueness for a class of degenerate Itô-stochastic differential equations

Abstract: We show pathwise uniqueness for a class of degenerate It^{o}-SDE among all of its weak solutions that spend zero time at the points of degeneracy of the dispersion matrix. Consequently, by the Yamada-Watanabe Theorem and a weak existence result, the pathwise unique solutions can be shown to be strong and to exist. The main tools to show pathwise uniqueness are inequalities associated with maximal functions and a Krylov type estimate derived from elliptic regularity and uniqueness in law.