Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2013 iii Paper 27 1 iii Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-07
As printed, the lower bound needs a connectedness hypothesis. This illustrates that radius gives no positive lower bound for disconnected harmonic hull capacity. A compact H-hull need not have connected closure. To see the obstruction, take , set , and use three disjoint vertical slits,Their complement in the complex upper half-plane is a simply connected domain: the three slits attach to the real boundary, and create no interior holes. Symmetry shows that the smallest enclosing half-disc is centred at zero and has radius one. More explicitly, any real centre has maximum distance to the two outer tips at least , while the unit half-disc contains every slit. Also and has modulus one.
For a vertical slit of height , the mapping-out function of a vertical slit maps its two faces onto an interval of length , so its harmonic capacity from infinity in the upper half-plane is . Subadditivity of harmonic hull capacity, from the union bound for the Brownian hitting events, givesThus the requested conclusion does not follow from the printed assumptions.
The intended reflection lower bound for harmonic hull capacity works when the closure is a connected continuum joining the two specified points, as for a slit hull. Reflect in the vertical line through , using . The reflected continuum joins to . Together the original and reflected continua form a barrier between infinity and the segment together with the real interval between and . One can first verify this separation for polygonal simple arcs, then use decreasing connected neighbourhoods of the continuum. Hence, for Brownian motion started at , large, reaching or the real interval between and requires a hit of the original or reflected barrier. Reflection symmetry and the union bound giveFor the connected slit setting, the real attachment endpoints have zero harmonic measure, so the last event may be written with .
For , use the branch of the square root fixed by hydrodynamic normalization at infinity:The two slit faces together have image length . The interval has image length , by the square-root formula on the appropriate real side. Thus the image length of is . Multiply the probability inequality by and use part (i); the allowed starting approach includes . We obtainunder the stated connected-barrier interpretation. If , the model slit is empty and has length , giving the same lower bound by the real-interval argument. The connectedness repair is essential, as the explicit three-slit counterexample demonstrates.
For a connected slit joining to with , reflect across the vertical line through . The two slits separate the vertical segment below the common tip and the intervening real boundary from infinity. Brownian reflection symmetry bounds the corresponding model hitting probability by twice the original hull-hitting probability. Mapping out the vertical segment gives total boundary-image length for its two banks together with the real interval between and . The harmonic-measure asymptotic at infinity gives the displayed bound. This argument requires a separating connected barrier; radius gives no positive lower bound for disconnected harmonic hull capacity.