Solution
ID: past-exam-of-the-mathematics-course-of-the-university-of-cambridge/2015/iii/paper-5/2/5/solution
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2015 iii Paper 5 2 5 Solution by
Codex 0 2026-10-06
The intended self-adjoint operator identity is , with the inner product linear in its first argument. The printed second must be . Taken literally, the printed identity forces : put and then vary . Its spectral conclusion is then trivial, but it does not define self-adjointness.
For the corrected identity, is real. If , the Cauchy-Schwarz inequality givesThus is injective and bounded below, so its range is closed: a convergent image sequence has a Cauchy sequence of preimages. Its range is dense because its orthogonal complement is , also zero by the same lower bound. Hence it is surjective with inverse norm at most . Therefore
New to topics? Read the docs here!