Solution

ID: past-exam-of-the-mathematics-course-of-the-year-1-of-the-natural-sciences-course-of-the-university-of-cambridge/2016/paper-1/12/b/ii/solution

Within the requested first-quadrant square, the stationary points visible in the contour plot are the corner minimum and the saddle . Near the origin, , so the low positive contours look like quarter-circles. Along either coordinate axis, rises monotonically. Along the diagonal, rises to at , returns to zero at , then becomes negative.
The saddle contour crosses at and separates the central positive contours from the outer diagonal region. Negative contours occur toward , where , while the axis corners and have . These checks determine both the contour ordering and the change of connectivity at the saddle; the figure shows these level sets.
Figure 1.
Contours of the quartic function in the first-quadrant square, with the saddle level highlighted
. Details.

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