A function is differentiable at if there is a linear map such that
The map , which is unique, is the derivative .
Expanding in a matrix increment gives
Therefore is differentiable everywhere and
The inverse function theorem states that if is continuously differentiable near and is invertible, then restricts to a bijection between neighbourhoods of and ; its local inverse is continuously differentiable, with derivative
In the normalized case and , continuity of gives a closed ball on which
For small , define . The mean value inequality makes a contraction mapping with constant . If , then
so maps the ball into itself. The contraction mapping theorem gives a unique fixed point , and the fixed-point equation is precisely . Moreover,
so . Thus is a continuous local inverse.
For the polynomial map in the question,
The derivative is invertible, so the inverse function theorem supplies some and a continuously differentiable such that
There can be no inverse on all of , because
so is not injective.
A map between metric spaces is a contraction mapping if some satisfies for all .
The Banach fixed-point theorem states that a contraction from a nonempty complete metric space to itself has a unique fixed point. Indeed, for ,
so the geometric-series estimate makes Cauchy. Completeness gives a limit , continuity gives , and
proves uniqueness.
Every solution of lies in . The cosine maps this complete interval into itself and, by the mean value theorem, has Lipschitz constant at most there. It therefore has exactly one real fixed point.
The mean value inequality says that on a convex domain, a uniform derivative bound implies . Equip with the maximum norm and take
For , elementary cosine bounds give
so . The maximum absolute row sum of
is at most . The mean value inequality makes a contraction on the complete set , so it has a fixed point.
For , the function is differentiable at if there is a linear map such that
The linear map is unique and is the Frechet derivative . The function is continuously differentiable at if it is differentiable on a neighbourhood of and the map , with values in the space of linear maps equipped with the operator norm, is continuous at .
If is linear, then
Consequently at every . The derivative is a constant function of , hence is continuous, so every linear map is continuously differentiable everywhere.
The mean value inequality says that if the line segment lies in and
then
To prove it, put . The claim is immediate if . Otherwise set and apply the one-dimensional mean value theorem to the real-valued function
For some , the chain rule gives
as required.
Now suppose that is open and connected and that for every . Every point has an open ball contained in . The mean value inequality with shows that is constant on each such ball, so is locally constant. Fix . The level set
is nonempty and open in ; its complement is also open because is locally constant. Since is connected, . This proves the zero derivative on a connected open set result: is constant.
The inverse function theorem states that if is continuously differentiable, , and is an invertible linear map, then there are open neighbourhoods of and of such that is a bijection whose inverse is continuously differentiable.
For the curve in the question, define the continuously differentiable function
Then
The implicit function theorem, which follows from the inverse function theorem applied to , therefore gives an open interval containing , an open neighbourhood of , and a continuously differentiable, hence continuous, function such that
Zero derivative on a connected open set Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-09-24
A differentiable map on a connected open subset of Euclidean space whose derivative vanishes everywhere is constant. The mean value inequality makes it constant on every ball in the domain, hence locally constant; connectedness then makes the value global.