Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2016 iii Paper 331 1 b Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-06
A direct elimination of pressure gives the same result as taking a double curl of the momentum equation. Incompressibility gives . Apply to the vertical momentum equation and subtract this pressure derivative to obtainHere is the horizontal Laplacian. At , impermeability gives and fixed temperature gives . The stress-free boundary condition gives , since horizontal derivatives of the boundary value vanish. Differentiating incompressibility once in therefore givesFor a horizontal Fourier mode , with real . More generally the nonnegative spectrum of follows by integration by parts for periodic or square-integrable horizontal disturbances. Substituting the separated normal mode gives, with ,The boundary conditions admit a complete Fourier sine series in . For a nonzero horizontal wavenumber, take , , and set . The two amplitude equations areThus the stress-free convection growth-rate polynomial isIts discriminant is , so both growth rates are real for . For , its two coefficients after the leading term are positive: their sum gives , and their product is . Real roots are both negative; nonreal roots have real part . Hence stable heating from above damps every mode. Horizontally uniform thermal modes and uncoupled horizontal viscous modes are also purely damped; impermeability and incompressibility exclude a horizontally uniform nonzero .
Because the unstable-side roots are real, the onset is stationary, an exchange of stabilities in stress-free convection. Setting gives the free-slip convection neutral curveWith , its derivative has the sign of . Its minimum is at , with value . Minimizing also over gives the critical values
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2016 iii Paper 331 4 a Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-06
Use the kinetic-energy inner product , with perturbation energy . On divergence-free fields the primal generator, before the pressure projection, isThe base state is also divergence-free. The periodic boundary terms in cancel, and decay at removes the remaining boundary terms. Integration by parts changes to ; the Laplacian is self-adjoint under these conditions. Writing , the shear term has adjoint operator . A pressure gradient pairs to zero with a divergence-free field. Hencewhere the last term enforces the divergence-free projection.
To conserve over the finite interval, the physical-time adjoint obeys . Put and ; then . This reverses the interval from towards , or towards .
For , the vorticity cross-product identity and the curl of a cross producthold when both fields are divergence-free. Their difference equals the transport and shear terms in the adjoint operator. Therefore the adjoint linearized Navier-Stokes evolution isThe Leray-Helmholtz projection determines the adjoint pressure. The time-dependent base state is evaluated at ; no extra time derivative of that base state appears in the spatial adjoint operator.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2017 iii Paper 105 2 e Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-05
For the spherical coordinates in the question, the coordinate tangent vectors are mutually orthogonal, with lengths . Their metric tensor is therefore and the Jacobian determinant is . Applying the divergence formula to the gradient givesFor example, the formula follows directly from for this diagonal metric. These coordinates are valid away from the polar axis and angular seam; the Laplacian is a smooth geometric operator there as well, described by other charts. The coordinate volume form integrates over , , , with the usual periodic identification.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2017 iii Paper 105 2 g Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-05
The coefficients in the spherical Laplacian are independent of , so . Also is tangent to both boundary spheres; differentiating the zero boundary trace gives another zero trace. Therefore satisfies and the same homogeneous Dirichlet boundary conditions.
In Cartesian coordinates , a globally smooth rotation field even where angular coordinates are singular. Permuting coordinate axes gives , and . For each, the rotational commutator for the Laplacian follows directly from ; antisymmetrizing cancels the extra terms. ThusIf is radial, all these right-hand sides vanish. Uniqueness from the energy estimate makes every zero. At each point of a sphere the rotation fields span its tangent plane, so all tangential derivatives of vanish. Each sphere is connected, giving . This proves radiality without assuming it as a separation-of-variables ansatz.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2017 iii Paper 107 5 c Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-05
First prove the hinted Caccioppoli inequality. Testing the weak formulation with is legitimate by approximation in the zero-boundary Sobolev space. Let . Thenby Young inequality. HenceNo derivative of the measurable coefficient matrix is taken.
Set . The denominator is finite and positive because is continuous on the compact closure and nonzero. Each solves the same linear equation and . For every , choose a cutoff function equal to one on and supported in a slightly larger interior Euclidean ball. The energy bound gives a uniform bound.
Take radii . Weak compactness and a diagonal subsequence argument produce one subsequence converging weakly in for every , with consistent restrictions defining . Part (b) and the Arzela-Ascoli theorem allow a further subsequence converging uniformly on . Its uniform limit agrees almost everywhere with the weak limit and supplies its continuous representative there.
For every smooth compactly supported test function, choose containing its support. Since and converges weakly there,Thus the compactness of normalized weak elliptic solutions givesThe diagonal step is needed to retain the equation beyond the small Euclidean ball of uniform convergence. The limit need not be nonzero: for the Laplacian in dimension at least two, the normalized harmonic functions tend uniformly to zero on each smaller Euclidean ball.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2017 iii Paper 310 2 c Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-06
Relativistic pressure gives the radiation fluid a sound speed . Well inside the sound horizon, , radiation linear cosmological density perturbations undergo rapid pressure-supported oscillations instead of sustained gravitational growth. Their potential decays. For an ideal radiation fluid with negligible scalar anisotropic stress, the regular Newtonian gauge in cosmology solution during radiation domination illustrates this explicitly:For its amplitude is . Thus radiation in cosmology remains essential to the background Friedmann equation, while its rapidly oscillating gravitational forcing can be smoothed out when following the slowly varying cold dark matter density mode. This is the approximation behind the Mészáros equation.
The important limitation is that “subhorizon” alone is not a pointwise theorem that . Radiation can dominate the instantaneous potential during early radiation domination, and the forcing near horizon entry seeds the later logarithmic matter mode. We neglect that transient and rapidly oscillating forcing in the subsequent coarse-grained growth equation, not radiation's contribution to the expansion rate. Close to horizon entry, or for accurate oscillatory evolution, the coupled radiation and matter perturbation equations must be retained. For the slow matter potential, the metric time derivatives in part (a) are also suppressed relative to its spatial Laplacian by . The approximation smooths radiation perturbations while retaining radiation in cosmology in the background cosmic expansion.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2017 iii Paper 329 1 b Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-06
Let , , and . Applied forces and couples below are forces and torques on the solid; by force balance their values are also the strengths exerted by that solid on the fluid. This fixes the signs in Faxén's first law and Faxén's rotational law. To hold the passive sphere fixed, set its translation and angular velocity to zero in those laws. The incident two-mode tensorial squirmer flow givesOnly the stresslet part has vorticity:Consequently, for fixed as ,The leading force is the radial stresslet force. Its next correction, , comes from the incident potential dipole. The next correction, , contains both the swimmer's field and the Laplacian term in Faxén's first law. If the relevant coefficient vanishes, these next terms must be retained instead of calling the vanished term a nonzero leading approximation. Further exchanges in the method of reflections for Stokes flow are smaller still.
The passive sphere reflects primarily a Stokeslet with strength . At the swimmer, its velocity is . The unchanged surface slip velocity adds the free swimming velocity to the incident-flow contribution in Faxén's first law. ThusThe leading change is ; its next correction is the displayed term. Finite-radius Faxén's first law corrections, the passive sphere's reflected stresslet, and its rotlet contribute at order to translation.
For a Stokeslet at the origin,The curl of the first term is ; that of the second is also , before multiplying by . Hence . At the swimmer use displacement . The leading force is parallel to , so its Stokeslet has zero vorticity there. This eliminates the putative rotation. The potential dipole itself has no vorticity, but the holding force it induces is not radial. Applying Faxén's rotational law to its reflected Stokeslet yieldsThe passive sphere's rotlet and reflected stresslet can affect that last order, so they cannot restore the larger missing rotation. When , the boxed coefficient is zero and the higher-order terms determine any rotation.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2017 iii Paper 337 1 ii Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-06
Take and . Taking the divergence of the Stokes flow momentum equation gives ; applying the Laplacian to its vertical component then eliminates pressure and gives . The forced velocity and temperature are , so their advection product is and drops out at leading order. The steady heat equation reduces to .
Consequently the boundary value problem for the forced profiles isIts six boundary conditions areThe horizontal velocity field is , which directly verifies the incompressible flow and stress-free boundary condition. In the detuning used subsequently, may be replaced by in this leading problem, since its correction enters at order . The vertical profiles depend linearly on .
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2017 iii Paper 337 1 i Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-06
Take the layer depth as the length unit, its thermal diffusion time as the time unit, and its imposed temperature difference as the temperature unit. Then is the velocity field, the pressure after the conductive hydrostatic pressure has been subtracted, the departure from the conductive temperature , the upward unit vector, and the Rayleigh number. Here is the dimensional depth, the kinematic viscosity, the thermal diffusivity and the thermal expansion coefficient. The gradient, divergence and Laplacian act on the dimensionless coordinates. The term in the heat equation is advection of the background gradient, since . Mass density variations enter only the buoyancy term under the Boussinesq approximation; the incompressible flow constraint is .
For fixed, impermeable, stress-free plates, the no-penetration boundary condition, stress-free boundary condition and perfectly conducting thermal boundary condition areFor a nonzero horizontal Fourier mode, incompressibility gives , so the velocity conditions are equivalently on both plates. A uniform horizontal velocity is not fixed by these boundary conditions; take its mean to be zero when discussing the stationary forced pattern.
The printed small-Prandtl-number label does not generally justify these equations. In thermal-time units the full momentum equation contains , where the Prandtl number is . Dropping that term gives infinite-Prandtl-number convection or another explicitly justified Stokes flow approximation. It is not the general limit. For example the horizontal shear , , satisfies the full linear momentum equation and the plate conditions, and persists at fixed as . The printed inertia-free equation would instead require this shear to vanish. The following parts solve the equations actually displayed; applying them at small Prandtl number needs an additional slaving or creeping-flow ordering.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2017 iii Paper 337 3 a Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-06
For Darcy-Bénard convection, the dimensionless Darcy law is , with incompressibility and a heat equation about . Here is a Darcy thermal-time Rayleigh number, with permeability replacing the squared-depth dependence in the fluid-layer Rayleigh number. The stated stream function convention gives , so . The vertical-plane curl of Darcy law gives ; omitting the quadratic perturbation advection from the heat equation gives .
On the impermeable connected square boundary, zero normal velocity makes constant along the boundary; choose that constant as zero. The prescribed conductive boundary temperature fixes on all four sides. Thus the perfect-conductor wording is interpreted through the supplied homogeneous perturbation data: the side temperatures retain the background vertical profile, rather than imposing a different isothermal side state.
At marginal stability put and . The two coupled equations implyThe gauge transformation for conducting-square Darcy onset removes the first derivative:The square's Dirichlet Laplacian eigenfunctions are , with eigenvalues of equal to , . The first marginal value is thereforeIt is genuinely the first instability threshold, not just an isolated neutral value. Eliminating gives the temperature linear operator , where is the Dirichlet realization of an elliptic operator for the Laplacian. Integration by parts shows the second term is self-adjoint and nonnegative, since its quadratic form is . Thus the spectrum is real, starts negative at , and its leading eigenvalue cannot cross into growth without a zero eigenvalue. The smallest zero value is the one found above.
Let , and . Multiplying the lowest real by independent real and imaginary constants gives two real physical eigenfunctions:The subscripts indicate even and odd parity about . Because is even in , the first has even and odd , while the second reverses those parities. They are linearly independent and satisfy all four Dirichlet boundary conditions. The lowest complex eigenfunction is simple over the complex numbers, but its arbitrary complex multiplier supplies two independent real pairs; this explains the physical degeneracy.
Neutral and oscillatory modes in porous convection
. Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2018 iii Paper 107 1 d Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-05
The conclusion holds in dimension two. Shift and change sign to obtain a nonnegative harmonic function . Its circular mean satisfiesHere the angular second derivative in the polar-coordinate Laplacian integrates to zero. Thus ; nonnegativity for every forces . For , the mean value property for harmonic functions and nonnegativity giveThe removable singularity for a bounded harmonic function fills in the origin, and the harmonic Liouville theorem makes the extension constant.
The conclusion fails for : is positive and nonconstant, and its radial Laplacian vanishes away from zero. For , is a nonconstant function bounded below whose second derivative vanishes on both components of the punctured line.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2018 iii Paper 107 5 d Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-05
Let , so has zero Dirichlet boundary condition. Using the supplied form of the minimal surface equation for a graph, setFor and , the difference bound impliesandThe shifted arguments stay in the permitted radius-two ball, and . The Laplacian with zero Dirichlet boundary condition has trivial null space by the maximum principle for harmonic functions. Choose small enough that and , for the constants in part (c) with . Its small-data existence for a nonlinear elliptic Dirichlet problem supplies , and solves the minimal surface equation for a graph with the required boundary values.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2018 iii Paper 309 1 c Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-05
Put and write the Riemannian metric as a conformal rescaling of a Riemannian metric:The base metric is flat, so its Ricci scalar is zero and its Laplacian is . The formula for scalar curvature under conformal rescaling simplifies in dimension two toDifferentiate explicitly:Since , the required Ricci scalar is
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2019 iii Paper 317 4 ii Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-05
The same polytrope of index one interior equation is . A positive separated solution with zero density on all six cube faces is the cubic polytropic interiorIts Laplacian is , so the required side length isWith and , it satisfies the interior hydrostatic equilibrium and Poisson equation for Newtonian gravity. Integrating each sine factor yieldsThis formal interior solution is not an isolated physical cubic star. The cubic polytrope fails isolated gravitational matching: at a vertex, the product of sines has , so the interior potential predicts zero gravitational acceleration. At the vertex , however, the field generated by its own positive mass isand each component is strictly positive. There can be no continuous matching to the isolated external field without additional forces or mass sources. Thus solving the interior density equation and imposing zero face values is insufficient. Fluid stars also have no rigid structure to maintain sharp cubic faces, and observed stellar shapes are approximately spherical or rotationally flattened rather than cubic.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2019 iii Paper 331 4 a Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-05
The zero streamfunction gives zero velocity. The temperature obeys both prescribed temperature values, has no horizontal gradient, and has zero Laplacian. Thus it satisfies both equations with :This is the conductive state of Darcy-Bénard convection.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2019 iii Paper 344 2 d Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-05
Put . The noises required by a joint trajectory are and . Their independent Gaussian white noise weights give the joint path probability of an order parameter and its flux:For the physically reversed path, is time-even and the transport flux is time-odd. Therefore , , andThe common factor includes the two noise normalizations and the midpoint Jacobian determinant. Its calculation must include both relaxation channels. On a finite spatial grid, let and represent the divergence and gradient, with the discrete Laplacian, and let be the Hessian matrix of at the midpoint of time step . Differentiating the two required noises with respect to the next configuration and the interval flux gives the Jacobian matrixUsing the Schur complement, its Jacobian determinant, apart from the path-independent power of , isReversal visits the same midpoint configurations in reverse order, so the product of these factors is unchanged. The joint time-reversal invariance of a path Jacobian therefore involves the complete relaxation operator .
Taking the action difference givesRepeated component indices are summed. The second squared norm sums over both flux indices. This is mixed conserved and nonconserved order-parameter dynamics; reversing the order parameter history while leaving the flux unreversed would give the wrong probability ratio.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2019 ii Paper 4 37A b ii Solution Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-10-03
Applying the Laplacian to and using givesForone therefore hasTogether with part (i), these are the Stokes equations, so the fields form the Unscaled Papkovich–Neuber representation.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2020 ia Paper 2 10B c Solution Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-09-29
Suppose are solutions and put . Then and satisfies the homogeneous Robin boundary conditionFor , Green's first identity givesThe left side is nonnegative, so both sides vanish and . For , the Dirichlet boundary condition on and the same identity again imply . The solution is therefore unique for every .
For a regular spherically symmetric solution, the Laplacian equation isRegularity at the origin gives , hence . Applying the boundary condition at yieldsAt the Neumann boundary condition would require , which is impossible for . Equivalently, its compatibility condition would require .
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2021 ib Paper 3 3B Solution Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-09-25
