Stationary points of a cosine-modulated Gaussian

ID: stationary-points-of-a-cosine-modulated-gaussian

The gradient vanishes only when and . On each tangent branch, increases strictly from negative to positive infinity, so it has exactly one root . With , the Hessian matrix is diagonal with entries and . Its determinant is positive, so every stationary point is a strict maximum when or a strict minimum when . Signs alternate between successive tangent branches. This gives infinitely many nondegenerate extrema under a decaying Gaussian function envelope.

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