A geometric reformulation of the martingale problem associated with a set of diffusion processes is proposed. This formulation, based on second order geometry and Itô integration on manifolds, allows us to give a natural and effective definition of Lie symmetries for diffusion processes.2 Preliminaries: second order geometry and Itô integration on manifoldIn this section, also in order to fix notations, we briefly recall some basic facts about second order geometry and Itô integration on manifolds. The interested reader is referred to [5,16,19] for proofs and further details.
Second order geometryGiven a smooth manifold M , we denote by C ∞ (M ) the set of real-valued smooth functions defined on M . If F is a bundle with base manifold B, we denote by S(F ) the set of smooth sections of F . Finally, if M ′ is a manifold and n ∈ N, we denote by J n (M, M ′ ) the bundle of n jets of n times differentiable functions defined on M and taking values in M ′ . Let M be a smooth manifold and u be a global coordinate defined on R. The subset u −1 (0) ⊂ J 2 (M, R) is a submanifold of J 2 (M, R) and actually a vector subbundle of J 2 (M, R). Definition 2.1 The submanifold u −1 (0) ⊂ J 2 (M, R) is called the bundle of codiffusors of the manifold M and is denoted by τ * M .