Write the Fourier coefficients of the two boundary functions as . The Laplace equation in polar coordinates is . A separated mode satisfies . The ansatz gives , so the solutions are for and for .
Set and . Solving the two boundary equations for every mode yields
For real boundary data, the conjugate coefficients ensure this is real. On any compact subannulus , the multipliers and all their differentiated versions are bounded by a polynomial in times . The boundary coefficients are square summable by Parseval identity, so Cauchy-Schwarz inequality proves locally uniform convergence of the series and of all its derivatives. Thus it is smooth and satisfies the Laplace equation term by term.
Because the data are only , the Dirichlet boundary condition is interpreted in on circles. As , the first multiplier tends to one and the second to zero; both lie between zero and one. Dominated convergence of the square-summable Fourier coefficients gives in , and similarly as . Finally, any harmonic solution with these traces has Fourier coefficients satisfying the radial equation above with the same two endpoint values. Uniqueness of those scalar boundary-value problems makes every coefficient equal to the displayed one. Hence this is the unique harmonic solution with the prescribed traces; pointwise values at every boundary angle are not required by the given data.
Interpolate through the values at , and differentiate the interpolation polynomial at its newest node. In the backward coordinate , the Newton form is
with the factor interpreted as one and . For , the derivative of the factor at zero is . Thus the backward differentiation formula is
If denotes the forward-shift variable, corresponds to . Consequently the requested polynomial is
The first form is a polynomial valid also at . The second form is convenient for relating it to the truncated series of . Differentiation of the degree- interpolant has local derivative error , giving order for smooth solutions.
For , part (a) gives and the right-side polynomial is . On the scalar test equation , put . Its characteristic equation is
The linear stability domain contains every for which both roots have modulus strictly less than one. For real , the roots are positive; their larger numerator is less than three while their denominator exceeds three, so both are less than one. At the repeated root is , also strictly inside the unit circle. For , the roots are complex conjugates and their product is
Thus in every case both roots lie strictly inside the unit disk. Repeated roots there are allowed, since polynomial factors times their powers still tend to zero. Therefore
For , factor the matrix as
The determinant of a scalar multiple of an matrix gains the scalar's th power. Thus
The right side extends to a polynomial at : multiplying by removes all negative powers. Its value there is , since the leading coefficient of is . This equals , so the identity holds at zero with that interpretation.
For the relation between eigenvalues and the characteristic polynomial,
The first equivalence is the definition of an eigenvector; the others use the kernel of a linear map and the criterion for an invertible matrix to have nonzero determinant. Since has degree , the fundamental theorem of algebra gives roots over counted with multiplicity. The multiplicity of a root is its algebraic multiplicity, and the eigenspace is exactly ; its dimension is the geometric multiplicity, which need not equal the algebraic multiplicity.
Finally, factor over as , including repeated roots when . Substituting into this polynomial is valid because the resulting factors commute. If is an eigenvalue of , then
At least one factor must be zero, so its is an eigenvalue of and satisfies . Thus the reverse direction of this instance of the spectral mapping theorem is
This argument also covers , when the conclusion is that is singular and has eigenvalue zero.
For a fixed horse , independence of the race results gives probability of winning every race. The events that different horses win every race are disjoint, so
This is a homogeneous polynomial of degree . Apply part (a) to the nonnegative numbers , whose sum is one, to obtain . For the smallest probability occurs when every horse has winning probability ; for a single race regardless of these probabilities.
Let and write the constant-coefficient linear ordinary differential equation as . Since ,
The exponential never vanishes, so .
For the second claim, the product rule gives
for , with the term treated separately. Summing the coefficients yields
A root of multiplicity at least two has , proving is also a solution. This directly establishes the repeated-root contribution without assuming a solution formula. If the displayed coefficient list has leading zeros, the exponential calculation still applies to its actual polynomial degree.
Set . The resulting second-order linear differential equation is . A polynomial particular solution requires and , hence . The homogeneous characteristic roots of a constant-coefficient differential equation are , so
Integrating twice and renaming constants gives the general real solution
The four independent homogeneous terms account for the four initial data of the fourth-order linear ordinary differential equation.
For the substitution , repeated use of the chain rule, with , gives
Therefore
For , the map is invertible, and the transformed equation is exactly the equation just solved. Hence the general real solution on is
There is no requirement that extend as an even function through : only the branch is needed, so the sine and square-root terms must be retained.
Put and . The polynomial becomes
There are no terms of degree one or two, so the gradient and the entire Hessian matrix vanish at . It is a critical point with singular Hessian matrix. The lowest nontrivial approximation is
understood as the fourth-degree leading term rather than a uniform ratio asymptotic along its zero directions.
On the path the exact value is for . On the path it is for sufficiently small nonzero . Both paths approach the point, where . It is neither a local maximum nor a local minimum; it is a degenerate saddle point of a scalar function. The higher-order saddle test supplies the conclusion the singular Hessian matrix cannot supply.
We use , whose spectrum on a compact manifold is nonpositive; write for the positive Laplace-Beltrami operator. This convention will also make the heat operator in Question 3 equal to .
Let be an orthonormal basis of , and let be the unit-speed geodesic with and . Since a geodesic has vanishing acceleration for the Levi-Civita connection, differentiation twice along it gives the Riemannian Hessian:
Taking its metric trace yields the geodesic trace formula for the Laplace-Beltrami operator
The positive-sign convention puts a minus sign in front of this sum.
For the unit sphere, take and tangent unit vectors orthogonal to . Its great circle geodesics are . For a smooth ambient function near the sphere, the ordinary chain rule gives
The ambient orthonormal basis is . Thus, writing and similarly for ,
This proves the ambient restriction formula for the spherical Laplacian and shows why ambient derivatives normal to the sphere must be subtracted. The equivalent formula in spherical coordinates is
Let be the vector space of homogeneous polynomials of degree in variables, and its harmonic polynomials. If , homogeneous polynomial scaling gives . Substitution into the spherical coordinates formula gives
The restrictions are the degree- spherical harmonics. A homogeneous polynomial vanishing on the sphere vanishes on every nonzero ray and hence identically, so restriction is injective on .
We prove the harmonic decomposition of homogeneous polynomials that both counts these eigenfunctions and establishes completeness. For an ambient harmonic homogeneous polynomial of degree and , the spherical coordinates formula gives
For its coefficient is nonzero. Inductively assume homogeneous polynomials of degree have been decomposed into sums of . Apply this decomposition to for , and lift each summand by multiplying by and dividing by the displayed nonzero coefficient. The resulting satisfies , so . The same coefficient formula shows that no nonzero element of can be harmonic. Starting at degrees zero and one therefore proves the direct decomposition
Since , the multiplicity is
where the second term is zero for .
On , iterating the decomposition writes every polynomial restriction as a finite sum of spherical harmonics. The Stone-Weierstrass theorem makes these polynomial restrictions dense in , since coordinate functions separate points and constants are included; they are consequently dense in . Integration by parts makes symmetric on smooth functions and gives orthogonality between distinct eigenvalues. Normalizing within each finite-dimensional eigenspace gives a complete orthonormal eigenbasis . To check the full operator spectrum, let . For smooth , integration by parts gives the coefficients of as . Therefore finite harmonic partial sums approximate both and in , hence approximate in the graph norm. Conversely every coefficient sequence with is the graph norm limit of its finite harmonic sums. Thus the closure of has exactly this operator domain and is the real diagonal self-adjoint operator with entries . If is not one of these entries, the inverse has entries and is bounded because . This proves that there are no missing spectral values. The spectrum of the Laplacian on a sphere is
with the above multiplicities; for , negate every eigenvalue. For example has eigenvalues , with multiplicities one at zero and two for , and has multiplicity . The zero-dimensional sphere consists of two isolated points and has only the zero eigenvalue, with multiplicity two.
True. Put . Every fixes , permutes the polynomial's polynomial roots, and is an isometry by the uniqueness proved in part (a). Therefore
The strict inequalities single out as the unique closest polynomial root, so for every . The Fundamental theorem of Galois theory then gives
This closest-root descent in a Galois extension is the relevant form of Krasner's lemma. If polynomial roots repeat, the strict hypothesis excludes a second occurrence of ; otherwise the same argument applies unchanged.
False. Use the polynomial , with splitting field , , and label the polynomial roots . Take . Then
Both and are p-adic units, also when . Hence zero is the uniquely closest polynomial root, but , because . The polynomial need not be irreducible in the given setup. The inclusion established by Krasner's lemma goes in the direction in part (iii), not its converse.
A local field is nondiscrete and locally compact. In the non-Archimedean case its valuation ring is compact by the scaling argument in part (b). Any Cauchy sequence has a tail in a translate of a compact ball, so has a convergent subsequence; the Cauchy property forces the whole sequence to converge. Thus the field is complete. Part (b) gives a discrete valuation, a uniformizer , and a finite residue field , .
We construct the coefficient field rather than presuming it exists. The polynomial has derivative in characteristic . Every residue element therefore has a unique polynomial root lift by Hensel's lemma. The set of these lifts is a field: qth powers preserve addition and multiplication, so sums and products remain polynomial root lifts; a nonzero lift has inverse . Reduction identifies with . This is the finite coefficient field in positive-characteristic local fields.
For , choose with the same residue, write , and repeat with . Completeness gives
The first nonzero coefficient determines the valuation, so the expansion is unique. Multiplying an arbitrary field element by a suitable power of reduces it to this case. Consequently substitution gives a valued-field isomorphism
Addition and multiplication agree with those of Laurent series by convergence, and a nonzero series has a nonzero leading coefficient, establishing injectivity as well as surjectivity.
Conversely, is complete for its T-adic absolute value on a field. Its valuation ring is compact: fixing finitely many coefficients gives the finite partitions into balls, and the successive coefficient choices realize the inverse limit of the finite rings . Equivalently it is the product of countably many finite discrete coefficient sets. Thus it is a non-Archimedean local field. Distinct give nonisomorphic valued fields because their residue fields have different sizes. Replacing by any number in gives an equivalent absolute value on a field.
For the finite separable field extension define the inverse different, or codifferent, by
It is a fractional ideal of . The different ideal is its inverse fractional ideal.
Suppose the integer ring is generated by , with monic minimal polynomial of an algebraic element of degree . We prove the derivative formula using the coefficient pairing for a monogenic algebra. If are its distinct conjugate polynomial roots, Lagrange interpolation for a polynomial of degree less than gives
Comparing coefficients of yields
For any integral polynomial, first reduce modulo ; the coefficients stay integral because is monic over .
It follows that lies in the codifferent. To prove equality, consider the matrix
All entries are integral. Entries with are zero, and those with are one. Reversing the column order makes the matrix triangular with diagonal ones; thus its determinant is a unit of .
Write an arbitrary as with . Membership in the codifferent says . Since is invertible over , this forces every integral. Therefore
Separability ensures that ; the trace pairing calculation also proves that no extra factor has been overlooked.