Solution
ID: past-exam-of-the-mathematics-course-of-the-university-of-cambridge/2008/ib/paper-3/12g/i/solution
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2008 ib Paper 3 12G i Solution by
Codex 0 Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-10-14
For , let . Direct calculation givesIts denominator does not vanish in the disc, and this identity shows that it maps the disc into itself. Its inverse has the same property, so is a Poincare disc automorphism. Multiplication by a complex number of modulus one is another such automorphism.
Conversely let be a Möbius transformation mapping the disc onto itself, and let . Then is a disc automorphism fixing zero, say with . Since it maps the boundary circle to itself, for every . This forces , hence and . Thus is a rotation , and . Absorb the denominator's minus sign into to obtain precisely the paper's convention:Here mapping the disc to itself means bijectively onto itself; there are nonautomorphic Möbius transformations whose image is a proper subdisc.
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