Optimal discretization of stochastic integrals driven by general Brownian semimartingale¹

We study the optimal discretization error of stochastic integrals, driven by a multidimensional continuous Brownian semimartingale. In this setting we establish a pathwise lower bound for the renormalized quadratic variation of the error and we provide a sequence of discretization stopping times, which is asymptotically optimal. The latter is defined as hitting times of random ellipsoids by the semimartingale at hand. In comparison with previous available results, we allow a quite large class of semimartingales (relaxing in particular the non degeneracy conditions usually requested) and we prove that the asymptotic lower bound is attainable.