Past exam of the distribution theory course of the University of Oxford / 2023 / 1 / a / iii / Solution

On each interval $[k,k+1]$, $k\in \mathbb{Z}$, the function is $d(x)=x-k$ on $[k,k+\frac{1}{2}]$ and $d(x)=k+1-x$ on $[k+\frac{1}{2},k+1]$. Its ordinary derivative exists off $\frac{1}{2}\mathbb{Z}$ and is the locally integrable functionAssign arbitrary values at the endpoints. For a test function $\varphi$, split $-\int d{\varphi }^{\prime }$ at these corners and apply integration by parts on each piece. The adjacent boundary terms cancel because $d$ is continuous, and only finitely many pieces meet the compact support of $\varphi$. HenceThe distributional derivative is exactly the regular distribution of the ordinary derivative defined almost everywhere. There are no Dirac delta distributions in this first distributional derivative: corners change slope, while a jump of the function itself would create a point mass.