Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2013 iii Paper 67 1 a Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-07
For fixed , a large positive root must lie close to a pole of the tangent function: away from its poles, cannot balance the unbounded right side. Label the adjacent poles by and write . The Taylor series of givesSeek the asymptotic expansion . The coefficients of and giveThus the large roots near tangent poles satisfyThe first correction already supplies the requested dependence on . For the root approaches the pole from below; for it approaches from above. This labels roots by their nearby poles, avoiding an irrelevant finite shift in the enumeration of positive roots.
No positivity restriction on is required. The expansion requires fixed and , so the displacement is small. It is not uniform as . At the roots are exactly , a different leading sequence; these cannot be recovered by setting in the pole expansion. If varies with , its size must be checked against the small-displacement and successive-term conditions rather than using the fixed-parameter remainder blindly.
Tangent function 2026-10-07
A trigonometric function defined where . It has real simple poles at , and . This local pole identity generates the large roots near tangent poles.