Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2014 iii Paper 5 3 a iii Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-06
There is a normalization error in the PDF. With the printed unnormalized integral, testing a constant function equal to one would give a left side and a right side zero. Thus that formulation fails whenever .
Use instead the average . The Poincare-Wirtinger inequality, also called the Neumann-Poincare inequality, isIf no exists, subtract the average and normalize a violating sequence to obtain with , , and . This sequence is bounded in the Sobolev space . The Rellich-Kondrachov compactness theorem supplies a subsequence converging strongly in to .
For every compactly supported test function , integration by parts and these convergences give . Thus has zero weak gradient. The Sobolev function with zero weak gradient result and connectedness make constant. Strong convergence preserves its zero integral, so . It also preserves its norm one, a contradiction. This proves the correctly normalized Neumann-Poincare inequality.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2014 iii Paper 5 3 a iv Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-06
Work in the mean-zero Sobolev spaceThe integral is a continuous functional on , so is closed. The Neumann-Poincare inequality shows that is equivalent to the usual norm on , making a complete inner product there.
For the functional satisfiesThe Riesz representation theorem, or the Lax-Milgram theorem, gives a unique with for all . To recover every test, write . The constant contributes zero to and contributes to . Thus the same equality holds for all .
A weak solution exists whenever ; fixing its average to zero makes it unique. Moreover and the Neumann-Poincare inequality also controls .
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2014 iii Paper 5 3 b iii Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-14
For , two integrations by parts give the clamped Hessian identityBy density it remains valid on . Each has zero integral, first for compactly supported test functions and then by convergence. Applying the Neumann-Poincare inequality to each givesThe zero-boundary Poincaré inequality also gives . Hence, using a full-Hessian equivalent norm,Thus is an inner product whose norm is equivalent to the complete norm on the clamped second-order Sobolev space. The functional is bounded for this norm by the Cauchy-Schwarz inequality and the displayed bound. Apply the Riesz representation theorem, or the Lax-Milgram theorem, to get a unique representing . The clamped biharmonic problem has a unique weak solution for every , with and no zero-integral compatibility condition.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2014 iii Paper 5 3 b i Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-06
The clamped second-order Sobolev space is . On a smooth bounded domain the Sobolev trace theorem characterizes it by zero value and zero normal derivative on the boundary. In particular, its whole first-order boundary jet is zero, since tangential derivatives of the zero trace also vanish. As above, assume and classical regularity up to the boundary.
For a smooth weak solution, compactly supported test functions and two integrations by parts giveso pointwise. Membership in supplies on . Thus it is a classical solution of the clamped biharmonic problem.
Conversely, a classical solution with these traces belongs to . For every compactly supported test function, two integrations by parts give . Both sides are continuous for the norm, so the defining density of in extends this equality to every required test. The two notions agree under the stated smoothness.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2014 iii Paper 5 4 a iii Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-06
For the sharp energy estimate, stays uniform while the available bound diverges as when . If the coarser estimate is used for the first part, both displayed bounds diverge, but the first divergence is only an artifact of discarding an exact cancellation.
The method of characteristics explains why uniform control of the gradient cannot generally persist for the inviscid scalar conservation law. Before characteristic crossing, with initial data ,If somewhere, the denominator reaches zero in finite positive time. The solution steepens and the smooth description breaks down; an entropy solution can subsequently contain shocks. Positive viscosity replaces such a discontinuity by a thin smooth layer, which can have large gradient even while its norm remains controlled. The divergent bound does not assert that every flux and every initial datum form a shock; a linear flux, for example, has no such steepening.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2014 iii Paper 6 2 iii Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-06
Let be the quotient map. Since is norm closed and has finite codimension, the quotient is a finite-dimensional normed space. Choose a basis of its continuous dual and compose its coordinate linear functionals with . This gives such thatIf , it vanishes on . Evaluation at is weak-star continuous, and is weak-star dense, so it vanishes on all of . The dual norm formula gives . Hence .
Assume ; the zero space is trivially normed by any positive constant. We claim thatIf not, there would be and with . The sequence is bounded. Finite-dimensionality of gives a norm-convergent subsequence with limit . Then , and is norm closed because is Banach. Thus and , a contradiction. This is positive distance between a unit sphere and a disjoint finite-dimensional subspace.
Fix , identifying it with , and put . On , define . The distance definition givesThe Hahn-Banach theorem extends it to with , and .
Apply part (ii) with the Banach space , its finite-dimensional dual vector subspace , and the bidual space element . For every it supplies satisfyingThus . Normalize by and let to obtainHomogeneity gives, for all ,Consequently a finite-codimensional weak-star dense dual subspace is norming, with . Since is a real linear vector subspace and its ball is symmetric, the same supremum is obtained if an absolute value is inserted. The argument uses near-unit interpolation and a limiting supremum, not an assertion that the supremum is attained.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2014 iii Paper 6 2 i Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-06
The weak-star topology is the topology of pointwise convergence on . A basic neighborhood of has the formLet be the canonical embedding into the bidual, . It is an isometry. The Goldstine theorem says thatHere both balls are closed unit balls. Thus approximation is by finitely many dual evaluations at a time; the theorem does not assert norm density in the bidual space.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2014 iii Paper 6 2 iv Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-06
Suppose the weak-star closure of were a proper linear vector subspace of . The Hahn-Banach separation theorem would give a nonzero weak-star continuous linear functional vanishing on it. A continuous dual of a weak-star topology consists precisely of evaluations at points of : continuity bounds the linear functional by finitely many evaluations, so it factors through their finite-dimensional coordinate map and is a linear combination of them. Thus some would satisfy for all . The norming inequality would imply , a contradiction. Every norming subspace of is weak-star dense.
For the infinite-codimension example, takeHere is the absolutely summable sequence space and is the space of sequences converging to zero, a norm-closed vector subspace of . The dual identification is : a bounded sequence defines a linear functional of norm , and every linear functional on has this form by evaluating on the coordinate vectors and using density of finitely supported sequences.
For , use the finitely supported sequence whose first entries are and whose remaining entries vanish. It belongs to , has norm at most one, andThe reverse inequality follows from . Hence is 1-norming for , an instance of vanishing sequences norm the summable sequence space.
To prove infinite codimension, take disjoint infinite setsTheir indicator sequences have linearly independent classes in . Indeed, a finite combination has the constant value on ; if it tends to zero, every must vanish. Thus the quotient is infinite-dimensional.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2014 iii Paper 6 3 Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-06
The Riesz-Markov-Kakutani representation theorem says that a positive linear functional on has the form for a unique finite positive regular Borel measure , with norm . Its complex form says that every bounded complex linear functional is represented by a unique finite regular complex measure , andThe extension from positive to arbitrary linear functionals follows by positive/negative decomposition of real linear functionals and then real/imaginary decomposition. The last quantity is the total variation norm of a measure, so this identifies the dual isometrically.
An extreme point of a convex set cannot be written as with and distinct . The Krein-Milman theorem, applied with the underlying real locally convex weak-star topology, states
We next prove Milman's converse to the Krein-Milman theorem. Suppose an extreme point were outside the weak-star closure of . A basic weak-star neighborhood of disjoint from uses finitely many real coordinates: real and imaginary parts of evaluations at elements of . Its complement is the union of finitely many closed half-spacesIntersect these with , discard empty intersections, and call the resulting compact convex sets . They cover , and none contains .
The convex hull of their union is compact. Every point in it can be written with in the finite simplex and , by combining terms from the same convex set. The map from the simplex times to that sum is weak-star continuous, so its image is compact and closed. It therefore contains , in particular . But extremality forces every having a positive coefficient in a representation of to equal , contradicting . Hence
Assume . We claim that the extreme points of the dual unit ball of C(K) areA measure of norm less than one is not extreme, since it admits a small nonzero perturbation within the ball. For a measure of norm one, suppose is not a point mass. There is a Borel set with : if the measure support has two points, choose disjoint neighborhoods of positive mass; a regular probability measure supported at just one point is the corresponding point mass. Thenis a convex combination of distinct norm-one measures. Thus an extreme measure must have variation concentrated at one point, and must be with .
Conversely, if with , thenEquality throughout forces both measures to have all their variation at , and forces their phases to be . Hence , proving extremality. If , the dual ball is and its sole extreme point is .
Every finite Borel measure on is regular, so the given belongs to the dual unit ball of . Apply Banach-Alaoglu theorem and Krein-Milman theorem to that ball. It is the weak-star closed convex hull of these phased point masses. The unit ball of the finite-dimensional vector subspace is norm compact. Choose a finite -net in it. There is a convex combinationwhose integrals differ from those of by less than on every . Put . Then and . For any in the unit ball of , choose with . The linear functional has norm at most two, soScaling yields the requested estimate for every . This is atomic approximation on finite-dimensional spaces of continuous functions. Repeated nodes are allowed: keeping their individual terms preserves the exact sum of coefficient magnitudes even if their phases cancel. If , one point with coefficient one suffices.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2014 iii Paper 64 1 iii Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-07
Apply the direct method in the calculus of variations to . Since , take a minimizing sequence with . ThenThus the sequence is bounded in the bounded-variation space. The bounded-variation compactness gives a subsequence converging in the strong convergence sense in to . Boundedness of the linear operator gives strongly in , so the residual norm converges. The variation term is sequentially lower semicontinuous, henceTherefore attains the infimum. The useful inverse hypothesis is the lower bound ; a bounded inverse on the range already suffices for this proof. No uniqueness follows from the nonsquared fidelity.