Solution

ID: past-exam-of-the-mathematics-course-of-the-year-2-of-the-natural-sciences-course-of-the-university-of-cambridge/2013/paper-1/7/iii/solution

Inverting gives , hence the elliptic coordinates
Eliminating at fixed gives the ellipse
Its focal distance is . At fixed , eliminating instead gives the hyperbola
Its focal distance is also one, so both families have foci . A fixed traces an appropriate half of the hyperbola; complementary coordinate values complete it. Degenerate values give the focal segment and portions of the coordinate axes. Away from these degeneracies the curves are orthogonal by part (i), or by in the displayed parametrization. A branch of the inverse is used locally; its real part with is single-valued outside the focal segment.
Figure 1.
Confocal ellipses and hyperbolae generated by the complex inverse hyperbolic cosine
. Details.

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