Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2007 ib Paper 3 13H Solution Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-10-14
The proposed norm is finite because every continuous function on is bounded and integrable. It is nonnegative. If and at some point, continuity gives a nontrivial interval within on which is bounded below by a positive constant, contradicting the zero integral. Thus implies . The converse is immediate. Absolute homogeneity follows from , and the pointwise inequality integrates to the triangle inequality. These establish all the norm axioms, so is a normed vector space.
To test the Cauchy sequence condition, compare the terms with indices and . Put . The identities and giveBecause , we have . ThereforeIn particular, for all sufficiently large , these arbitrarily late pairs have norm distance greater than . This proves the sine sequence is not Cauchy in the integral norm. Thus the sequence is not Cauchy and does not converge to an element of , since every norm convergent sequence is Cauchy. This direct separation argument does not rely on completeness of .
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2007 iii Paper 10 2 a Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-14
Write . Use a submultiplicative Sobolev algebra norm for which the Fourier projections are contractive, and its compatible matrix/column norms. The numeric hypothesis is understood in this algebra norm; the unscaled Fourier Sobolev norm need not have multiplication constant one.
Let and denote the strictly positive and strictly negative Fourier subspaces. The equation is a contraction on , so it has a unique solution. Put and . The equation says , and . Similarly the contraction gives with . No invertibility of these solutions has yet been assumed.
Now belongs to both Fourier subalgebras, hence is a constant matrix . Taking constant coefficients on either side shows . We claim is invertible. If , then the Hardy compression annihilates , because . But on the Hardy Sobolev space has inverse given by a Neumann series, since the perturbation has norm less than one. Thus , and its constant coefficient is , forcing . Finite-dimensionality proves the claim.
Consequently is a left inverse of , and is a left inverse of . Matrix entries are functions in a commutative algebra, so pointwise finite-dimensional inversion makes these left inverses two-sided inverses in their respective Fourier subalgebras. SetThen , both factors are invertible in the stated algebras, and . If two normalized factorizations exist, lies in and is constant; evaluating the analytic side at zero makes it . This proves uniqueness. The argument is near-identity Sobolev loop factorization and, crucially, proves invertibility rather than treating the contraction solution itself as automatically invertible.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2007 iii Paper 10 2 b Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-14
Give its natural trace-class topology: differentiability means , with remainder small in trace norm. The Fredholm determinant is the continuous extension of finite-rank determinants; it is multiplicative by finite-rank approximation and satisfiesnear zero. For example its exterior-power series bounds the remainder by , proving that estimate directly.
Factor . Multiplicativity and the preceding expansion giveThe determinant is nonzero for invertible , so division yields the required logarithmic derivative. Differentiability only in the bounded-operator norm would not justify this trace formula; the specified topology is essential.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2007 iii Paper 10 2 c Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-14
Let be trace class and set . The integral identity is trace-norm convergent. It shows that this difference is trace class. The analogous Duhamel identity then makes trace class and differentiable in that norm. Hence .
Compute the right logarithmic derivative without taking separate traces of :Trace invariance under bounded invertible similarity and the integral identity give . Cyclicity with a trace-class factor makes this equal to the trace in part (b). As , integrating the scalar differential equation givesThis Fredholm determinant of an exponential commutator can be nontrivial in infinite dimension: it is not legitimate to set the trace of a trace-class commutator to zero when themselves need not be trace class.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2007 iii Paper 10 3 a Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-14
A unitary family with the required Weyl relations isTranslations preserve the norm and the multiplier has modulus one. Multiplication of two such operators leaves the phase after extracting , proving the relation. Translation and modulation are strongly continuous, first on compactly supported smooth functions by direct estimates, then on all of by density and unitarity.
If a bounded operator commutes with all , it commutes with translations and every modulation . The spectral theorem for the multiplication coordinate therefore makes it commute with all bounded multiplication operators and interval projections. One can see its form directly: on a finite interval , set . For bounded supported in , commutation gives . Testing characteristic functions shows almost everywhere. On increasing intervals these functions agree on overlaps and yield a single with .
Commutation with translations says almost everywhere for every . Convolving with a smooth approximate identity produces smooth functions invariant under every translation, hence constants. Passing to the local limit makes constant almost everywhere. Therefore is a scalar operator, and the unitary family acts irreducibly.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2007 iii Paper 10 5 Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-14
The Fredholm index measures the finite-dimensional obstruction to inverting an operator. For a bounded operator between Hilbert spaces, the Fredholm conditions are that its range of a bounded linear operator is closed and its kernel and cokernel are finite-dimensional. The orthogonal complement of the range is , soAn invertible linear map has Fredholm index zero; the converse needs an additional finite-dimensional correction, since an operator can have equally large kernel and cokernel.
First construct an inverse up to finite-rank operators. On , the restriction of is a bounded bijection onto its closed range, with bounded inverse by the bounded inverse theorem. Extend that inverse by zero on , obtaining . ThenConversely, suppose and are compact operators. On , the first identity expresses the identity as a compact operator, so this kernel is finite-dimensional. If were not bounded below on , there would be unit vectors in that complement with . Write . Compactness of gives a subsequence for which converges, hence converges to a unit vector in with , a contradiction. This lower bound makes the range closed. Applying the analogous argument to , using , proves that its kernel is finite-dimensional. This proves the Atkinson theorem: a bounded operator is Fredholm exactly when it has an inverse modulo compact operators. For operators on one Hilbert space this says that its image in the Calkin algebra is invertible.
The Fredholm index is stable. Decompose the domain as , where , and the target as , where and . A sufficiently small norm perturbation has block matrixMultiplying by invertible triangular block matrices reduces this matrix to the direct sum of and the Schur complement . The latter's kernel dimension minus cokernel dimension is , whatever its rank. Therefore the Fredholm set is open and the index is locally constant. If is compact, the same parametrix works modulo compact operators for every , . Local constancy along this path gives
For Fredholm operators and , multiplication of parametrices shows that is Fredholm. Its index is additive. Here is a direct proof, rather than an assertion of additivity. There is an exact sequence of finite-dimensional spacesThe map from takes a vector to its class modulo ; the next takes the class of to that of ; the last is the quotient map. For example, a class lies in the kernel of the middle map exactly when for some , so . This verifies the only less immediate exactness assertion; the others follow directly from their definitions. Alternating the dimensions givesAlso , and indices add under direct sums. For with compact, the index is zero, so injectivity is equivalent to surjectivity. More generally is solvable exactly when is orthogonal to : these are the finitely many compatibility conditions in the Fredholm alternative.
Toeplitz operators exhibit how this analytic index detects a topological winding. Let be the Hardy space of the circle, spanned by , and let be its orthogonal projection. For a continuous symbol , define , where is multiplication by . Then . The product defect isFor trigonometric polynomials the crossing of negative and nonnegative Fourier modes has finite rank. Uniform approximation of continuous symbols by trigonometric polynomials, together with the displayed norm estimate, therefore makes this defect a compact operator for all continuous . If is nowhere zero, is continuous and is a two-sided parametrix modulo compact operators. Thus is Fredholm.
The converse is instructive. If at , consider the normalized Hardy kernelsTheir norms are one, their individual Fourier coefficients tend to zero as , and hence they converge weakly to zero. Their squared moduli are the Poisson kernel, so continuity of givesA Fredholm operator is bounded below off its finite-dimensional kernel. The projection of these weakly vanishing vectors onto that kernel tends to zero, contradicting this lower bound. Thus a continuous-symbol Toeplitz operator is Fredholm exactly when its symbol never vanishes. Applying the same argument to gives its essential spectrum as , with essential spectrum defined by failure of the Fredholm property.
For nonvanishing , let . Lifting a continuous argument of on gives an argument change . After division by , its argument has matching endpoints, so there is a continuous function with . The nonvanishing-symbol homotopy reduces the index to that of . For this is the th power of the unilateral shift operator, whose kernel is zero and whose range has codimension . For it is the th power of the adjoint shift, whose kernel has dimension and whose range is all of . ConsequentlyThe minus sign comes from counting missing nonnegative Fourier modes. This is a concrete bridge between the Fredholm index, stability under compact perturbations, and the winding number of a loop.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2007 iii Paper 10 6 Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-14
On the torus , choose normalized Haar measure, so that , , is an orthonormal basis of . A periodic Sobolev space is defined, for any real , byFor negative , the coefficients describe distributions rather than necessarily functions. For a nonnegative integer , the weight is comparable to , so this norm is equivalent to the sum of the squared norms of all weak derivatives through order . Fourier truncation proves that smooth trigonometric polynomials are dense. The pairing identifies the continuous dual of with , giving Sobolev duality.
Two Fourier estimates explain the usefulness of these spaces. If , the Cauchy-Schwarz inequality givesUniform convergence of the differentiated Fourier series proves the Sobolev embedding . If , a bounded subset of has uniformly small high-frequency tails in :Finite-dimensional Fourier truncation therefore proves the compact embedding , the periodic version of Rellich-Kondrachov compactness theorem. In addition, for multiplication is continuous , making it a Sobolev algebra. Indeed the weighted coefficient of a product is bounded by the sum of the convolutions of with and of with ; Cauchy-Schwarz puts unweighted coefficients in , and the case of Young's convolution inequality finishes the estimate.
For eigenfunction expansions, distinguish ellipticity from self-adjointness. An arbitrary non-self-adjoint elliptic operator need not have an orthonormal basis of eigenfunctions. A useful definite setting iswith smooth real periodic coefficients, , real , and uniform ellipticityTake the self-adjoint realization in with domain . Its construction and spectral properties can be seen from the associated form on ,For a sufficiently large constant , is a positive coercive form: , and . The Lax-Milgram theorem supplies the unique weak solution of for ; the form is Hermitian, which gives symmetry of its inverse on .
The regularity input is the periodic elliptic estimateHere is why an elliptic operator gains two derivatives. With coefficients frozen at a point, its principal symbol dominates , and the estimate follows by multiplying Fourier coefficients by that symbol. On a sufficiently small coordinate patch, the difference of the leading coefficients from these constants has arbitrarily small supremum norm. In the integer-order differentiated estimate, this absorbs the highest derivatives into the left side; derivatives falling on coefficients contribute only lower-order terms. A partition of unity reduces the variable-coefficient problem to such patches. Its commutators with have order one, controlled bywhich follows by splitting low and high Fourier modes. Absorbing these terms gives the displayed estimate. For a weak solution, the same localization with difference quotients first bounds its second weak derivatives for ; differentiating and repeating then gives for nonnegative integer . Interpolation and duality extend the scale to real orders. In particular is bounded.
Let . Compactness of makes a compact operator. Symmetry of the form makes self-adjoint, and positivity of makes positive and injective. Its range is dense because . The spectral theorem for compact self-adjoint operators consequently gives an orthonormal basis withElliptic regularity bootstraps every to a smooth function. Each eigenvalue has finite multiplicity. Thus a self-adjoint uniformly elliptic second-order operator on the torus has a complete smooth orthonormal eigenfunction expansion with discrete eigenvalues tending to infinity.
Writing , every has in , with . Iterating the elliptic estimate shows that the graph norm of is equivalent to the norm. Interpolation and duality give the more general spectral descriptionThe comparison constants depend on the operator and . In particular smooth functions have coefficients decaying faster than every power of , and their expansions converge in every Sobolev norm and hence in every norm.
This gives a practical way to solve elliptic equations. The equation is solvable if and only if whenever ; then one may take on the other eigenspaces and add an arbitrary vector in . The Sobolev description proves the two-derivative gain and the Fredholm alternative, rather than leaving them as formal series manipulations. Similarly the solution of the heat equation isFor every the exponential decay at high eigenvalues places this solution in every Sobolev space, hence it is smooth.
For the Laplacian the eigenfunctions are precisely with eigenvalues . The number with is the number of lattice points in a radius- ball, asymptotic to its volume by comparison with unit cubes. For the general self-adjoint operator above, bounds on its form above and below by positive multiples of plus constants, together with the Courant–Fischer min-max principle, imply . Thus the growth reflects dimension and the two-derivative order. Compactness of the torus is essential: on , translated bumps prevent the compact embedding, and the Laplacian instead has continuous spectrum described by the Fourier transform.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2007 iii Paper 10 7 Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-14
Use the unitary normalization of the Fourier transform,The Schwartz space consists of smooth functions for which every Schwartz seminorm is finite. Such functions and all their derivatives are integrable. Differentiating under the integral and integrating by parts giveConsequentlyExpand the derivative by the product rule and insert the integrable weight ; the right side is bounded by finitely many Schwartz seminorms of . This proves continuity . The identical argument with the opposite sign proves continuity of .
For surjectivity and injectivity an inversion proof is needed. If , multiply by . Fubini's theorem and the elementary Gaussian integral giveThe Gaussian has total integral one and its mass outside any fixed ball tends to zero. The right side therefore tends to , by uniform continuity of . On the left, , so dominated convergence gives . This proves . Reversing the signs in the same calculation proves . ThusIts inverse is continuous by the seminorm estimate already proved. This establishes the requested bijection without assuming Fourier inversion as an unexplained theorem.
Inversion gives and the Parseval identity. Indeed, inserting the integral for into and using gives . Density of Schwartz functions in extends to a unitary operator on , the Plancherel theorem. Translation of becomes multiplication by a phase, modulation becomes frequency translation, andThese formulas explain why the Fourier transform diagonalizes constant-coefficient differential operators. By transpose it also defines a bijection of the tempered distributions: with the complex-linear distributional pairing, , since the Fourier kernel is symmetric in its variables.
The connection with creation and annihilation operators is especially transparent for the harmonic oscillator. On the common invariant dense domain , setIntegration by parts shows that these are formal Hilbert-space adjoints. They are closable unbounded operators; commutators below are computed on , avoiding undefined products on arbitrary vectors. The identity gives the canonical commutation relationsIt also givesThe normalized vacuum satisfies . Define the Hermite functionsMoving annihilation operators past creation operators with the commutation relations provesThese same relations show that the Hermite functions are orthonormal: unequal occupations are orthogonal eigenvectors of one of the commuting symmetric number operators , and the ladder relations recursively give norm one.
For completeness, let be orthogonal to every . The Hermite polynomials have nonzero leading monomials and triangular lower-degree terms, so these orthogonality relations say that all polynomial moments of vanish. Its Fourier integral extends to an entire function of :The Cauchy-Schwarz inequality, with the Gaussian absorbing every exponential linear weight and every polynomial, justifies differentiation uniformly on compact sets of . Every Taylor coefficient at zero is a vanishing moment, so the entire function is zero. Fourier uniqueness on follows here without circularity: if an function has zero Fourier transform, convolving it with gives zero by the Gaussian integral and Fubini, and the approximate-identity limit in gives the original function zero. Thus and . The Hermite functions form an orthonormal basis of .
Finally, the elementary Gaussian integral gives . The derivative and multiplication identities above implywhere the operators on the right act on the frequency variable. HenceThus creation and annihilation organize both the oscillator's spectral decomposition and the four possible Fourier eigenvalues. On Schwartz functions the oscillator powers control weighted derivatives, and Hermite coefficients decay faster than every power of ; conversely this rapid coefficient decay implies all Schwartz seminorms are finite. The Fourier phases preserve this decay, providing another explanation of the Fourier automorphism of Schwartz space.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2007 iii Paper 10 8 Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-14
The loop group here is , with pointwise multiplication. Although it is abelian, its nontrivial positive-energy quantum representations are projective: implementers can commute only up to a phase. A positive energy representation of the loop group of U(1) has rotations whose self-adjoint generator is bounded below and which implement in the projective unitary group. The fermionic construction gives both that phase and an explicit bosonic description.
Choose the one-particle Hilbert space with modes , , and projection onto . Use the polarized fermionic Fock spacewhere the exterior powers are Hilbert-completed and the tensor product is graded. Its vacuum fills all modes and leaves empty; excitations are particles in the empty modes and holes in the filled modes. The fermionic annihilation operators and fermionic creation operators satisfy the canonical anticommutation relationsFinite particle-hole configurations form an orthonormal basis. As in the finite-dimensional exterior algebra construction, their creation and annihilation operators act irreducibly: an operator in the commutant sends the vacuum to a scalar vacuum, since the joint kernel of its vacuum annihilators is one-dimensional, and then acts by that scalar on the dense configuration basis.
Segal's quantization criterion for fermions says that a unitary one-particle operator has a unitary implementer on this Fock space, satisfying , exactly whenEquivalently is Hilbert-Schmidt. Implementers are unique up to phase, hence form a projective unitary representation of the restricted unitary group. This is the fermionic, polarized criterion; it is not a condition that the entire operator be Hilbert-Schmidt. The criterion and the corresponding continuity topology are stated in Theorem III.2.1.1 of the fermionic construction of loop-group representations. For the compact principal-angle part of a pair of polarizations, the threshold has a concrete interpretation. Its two-dimensional blocks are rotations through angles ; finitely many unmatched modes can be handled separately. Each angle rotates the vacuum into times its original component plus times a particle-hole pair. After discarding finitely many exceptional blocks, the successive tensor products are Cauchy precisely when converges to a nonzero value, equivalently . In this block model the sum is exactly half the squared Hilbert-Schmidt norm of the projection difference; finitely many unmatched modes account for a change of charge. Infinitely many unmatched modes already violate the criterion. This explains why infinitely many arbitrarily small mixings can fail to be implementable.
For , multiplication is a unitary one-particle operator. Its matrix entry from to is . ThereforeFor a fixed difference , exactly pairs cross the polarization boundary. Smoothness makes the sum finite, so Segal's quantization criterion for fermions constructs a continuous projective unitary representation of every smooth loop. Smooth convergence gives operator-norm convergence of and Hilbert-Schmidt convergence of its commutator, which is sufficient for the strong projective continuity of the implementers.
Normal ordering fixes the charge and rotation energy. On the dense finite-configuration domain putThe sums are finite on each configuration. A particle at adds charge one and energy ; a hole at adds charge minus one and energy . Consequently is a nonnegative self-adjoint diagonal operator with integer spectrum and finite-dimensional eigenspaces. The unitaries are strongly continuous, have period , and implement . Conjugating multiplication by this one-particle rotation gives , so their Fock implementers rotate the loop representation projectively. This is an actual positive-energy circle action.
The scalar anomaly is visible in the Heisenberg current algebra of a fermion on the circle. Define on finite-energy vectorsFor fixed the sum has only finitely many nonzero actions on any configuration. Direct use of the canonical anticommutation relations givesOn summing, the two noncentral sums cancel. If the central sum is : for the terms are precisely . ThusIn particular for . The coefficient one in the central term is the level of this basic representation.
Let be smooth and real. The normal-ordered infinitesimal implementer of multiplication by isThe sign of the current index matters: multiplication by raises the one-particle mode by , so it corresponds to . It follows either directly from the bilinear commutator or from the fermionic currents on the circle that . For trigonometric these are oscillator fields on the finite-energy domain; their self-adjoint closures exponentiate to the implementers of . For general smooth , their extensions are obtained by the oscillator-field construction below: guarantees the square-summable field coefficients, and Fourier truncation converges in the corresponding Weyl relations implementers. Thus no unjustified infinite operator product is required.
SetIt is real and antisymmetric for real . The Heisenberg current algebra of a fermion on the circle relations give . The Weyl relations, or the finite-mode Baker-Campbell-Hausdorff computation followed by the square-summable limit, yieldThis is an explicit two-cocycle on the identity component of the loop group. A different phase choice changes it by a group coboundary, but its antisymmetric commutator remains , and hence cannot be removed.
The winding components also matter. Every smooth loop is with , real periodic , and mean determined modulo . Let implement multiplication by . It moves the filled boundary one place upwards, so it raises charge by one; phases of charge ground states can be chosen so that . Conjugating the fermionic currents on the circle givesChoose . Since , one obtains the full loop group two-cocycle for U(1)The exponent is bilinear in the additive winding-logarithm coordinates, so expansion immediately gives . Replacing by changes by , whose exponential is identity since charges are integers; the scalar cocycle also stays unchanged since . Thus the expression is well-defined on loops, not just on chosen logarithms. It records both the derivative anomaly and the commutator of winding with constant loops.
For the fermion-boson correspondence on the circle, decompose into charge eigenspaces. The charge- ground state fills all integer modes . Its energy isFor , sum the energies of the added modes ; for , sum the hole energies of the removed modes . Every other charge- configuration is obtained by moving finitely many occupied levels upwards, so this is the lowest energy. Since preserves charge and lowers energy by , for .
Define bosonic annihilation operators and , . They obey . Their occupation vectorsare orthonormal by commuting positive fermionic currents on the circle through negative fermionic currents on the circle. Their energies are . It remains to prove that they span, rather than assume the boson correspondence. Count configurations by formal charge and energy . Empty modes can contain one extra particle, while filled modes , , can contain one hole. Therefore the fermionic character isThe charge form of the Jacobi triple product proved in Question 4 identifies this withThe reciprocal product counts bosonic occupations, or partitions of an integer. For fixed charge and energy, the finite-dimensional fermion space has exactly as many basis configurations as the independent fermionic current on the circle monomials already constructed. Hence those monomials exhaust every such space, proving their dense completeness. This establishes a unitary identification of every charge sector with a bosonic Fock space, and on that identificationThe usual half-integer fermion convention instead gives ground energy and requires the corresponding adjustment of rotations. Here integer modes were deliberately chosen to obtain a genuine circle action with integral nonnegative energies. The two ground states of energy zero, at charges zero and one, are therefore consistent, not a negative-energy defect.
This is also a constructive bosonic realization of the loop representation: the mean of acts by , nonzero modes of act as the square-summable oscillator field , and winding shifts the charge sectors. Taking tensor copies adds the fermionic current on the circle central terms and gives level . Positivity constrains their sign, since in a vacuum sector for . The level-one construction, its explicit loop cocycle, and its complete bosonic occupation basis show how an abelian classical loop group acquires noncommuting quantum currents while retaining positive rotation energy.