Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2002 iii Paper 52 5 d Solution 2026-10-14
Let the closed box have ceiling height above the source. The printed width alone does not specify this height, so it must appear as an additional geometrical parameter. Take here when the plume has first reached the ceiling and its thin outflow has spread across the box. The leading filling box model assumes a negligible source volume, insulated boundaries, fast horizontal spreading, slow evolution compared with the plume transit time, negligible diffusion, and . Below the interface the ambient still has its original temperature, so the local plume flux remains from part (c).
The ceiling outflow creates a warm upper region. Fluid entrainment draws the original lower fluid into the plume, making that upper region deepen. The filling-box first front is the lower material boundary of fluid already modified by plume discharge, separating it from the initially unmodified ambient; it need not bound a uniformly mixed upper layer. With negligible occupied plume area, volume conservation at its height givesThereforeIf source switch-on is the time origin instead, replace by elapsed time after the initial transit and spreading stage; the quasi-steady model does not resolve that stage.
The buoyancy jump requires distinguishing ambient fluid at the front from the plume crossing it. Just after the first ceiling outflow, the ambient buoyancy immediately above the nascent front isOutside the narrow plume, ambient temperature is transported without diffusion. If is its buoyancy relative to the original fluid, its equation isThe first front follows precisely these material trajectories, so the temperature of the fluid immediately above it is conserved. The initially unmodified fluid below has . Thus the ambient jump isBy contrast, the contemporaneous plume immediately below the front has , which grows as the front descends. That plume value is not the ambient jump across the material first front. Equating the two would inadvertently impose a uniformly mixed upper layer and discard the stable density stratification of the standard filling box model. Diffusion or extensive interfacial mixing can smooth and alter the ideal jump.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2002 iii Paper 55 1 Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-14
Write , and . The requested model neglects density differences and uses the same thermal transport coefficients in the interfacial balances. Let and . With no imposed heat gradient in the fresh liquid, its temperature remains . The prescribed linear temperature in the ice isThe salt and temperature fields in the lower liquid satisfy diffusion equations, and . For constant interfacial values and the proposed similarity solution, their decaying solutions areThese follow by substituting a variable into the diffusion equation, which gives ; integrating gives the complementary error function. Their values at and at infinity give the required boundary data.
For the upward-moving fresh-water/ice boundary, the Stefan condition is : negative means fresh water freezes. At the lower boundary the signed heat balance isSalt cannot enter the pure ice. With no bulk liquid motion its interfacial conservation law isThe derivatives and interface velocities areDefine . Substitution into all three balances givesTogether with , these determine the interfacial constants. In particular .
The physical branch has . Since is negative at negative arguments, the salt relation gives : lower-surface melting dilutes the brine. Combining the two heat balances eliminates the ice gradient and givesThus . The interface is at local liquidus equilibrium with diluted brine, while the undiluted far-field brine remains above its own liquidus. The similarity model describes a layer starting with zero thickness, or the long-time limit when an initial finite thickness no longer sets the dominant scale.
For the small-diffusivity-ratio limit, put and , keeping and the imposed concentrations fixed. Seek and . Then and . The upper heat balance givesIn the lower balance the two terms of order must cancel, givingConsequentlyand . Adding the two temperature differences yields . The negative root isThe resulting lies strictly between zero and . The salt relation therefore determines a finite negative , confirming its scaling. The top interface travels on the thermal scale , whereas the lower melting interface travels on the shorter solutal scale . This is the brine-ice sandwich with disparate diffusion scales; is the latent-to-sensible heat ratio, the reciprocal of the usual sensible-to-latent Stefan number convention.
The sketches show constant fresh-water temperature, a declining linear ice temperature, and a much broader thermal than solutal boundary layer in the brine. Concentration is zero in freshwater and pure ice, jumps to across the lower interface, and rises to . Accordingly the local liquidus is on the salt-free side, jumps to and falls rapidly to . In the phase diagram, the brine starts on the liquidus at and ends above it at ; the pure ice has concentration zero, and the interface tie-line joins it to the diluted brine.
Physically, the cold saline liquid permits freshwater to freeze above, but salt lowers the liquidus and allows the existing ice to melt into brine below even though that brine is colder than . Dilution raises the lower interfacial freezing temperature. Heat released by upper freezing supplies the lower melting and the conductive loss to the colder deep brine. With , upper freezing exceeds lower melting and the ice layer thickens as .
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2002 iii Paper 55 2 Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-14
Let the surface advance downwards at speed . Ice is stationary in the laboratory, so in the surface frame its velocity is . The steady heat equation with volumetric heating is thereforeTake the atmospheric heat flux to be negligible in the stated model. The upward conductive flux at the ice surface supplies the latent heat of sublimation, giving the Stefan condition .
Write and . For , solve the constant-coefficient equation to obtainFor the resonant case , its continuous limit isAn especially transparent way to find is to integrate the heat equation over the half-space. Its far-field gradient vanishes, soUsing the surface heat balance givesAbsorbed radiation supplies both the latent heat and the sensible heat needed to bring incoming cold ice to the surface temperature. This is the radiatively heated sublimation profile.
The surface gradient isThus temperature first rises into the solid, but ultimately falls to the colder far field: it has a subsurface maximum. For a useful dimensionless form, set , and . Thenwith limit when . The maximum is at , or at .
Melting begins below the surface if the interior maximum reaches . The surface remains constrained to the lower value , and the remote ice is cold. Increasing absorbed heating can raise the interior maximum to the melting point, after which an all-solid steady solution is no longer valid and an internal melt region must be modeled. The maximum, rather than the far-field temperature or surface temperature alone, decides onset.
For the linear stability analysis, perturb the mean surface by , with ice on . Approximate the base temperature locally by . The prescribed radiative source has no perturbation, so the perturbation heat equation is homogeneous. Choose outward curvature , so the Gibbs-Thomson effect gives local equilibrium temperature . If the perturbation temperature is , its surface condition isIn the quasi-static thermal limit, , henceLinearizing the Stefan condition, with the base gradient taken constant, gives . ThereforePositive amplifies long-wave shape perturbations, while capillarity suppresses sufficiently short waves. The unstable band is , and the approximate fastest mode is . This is the sublimation-front capillary instability.
The qualifications on wavelength matter. Retaining the perturbation's time dependence and mean recession giveswhose decay constant is . Replacing it by requiresWriting , the second condition becomes under the approximate dispersion relation. A simple sufficient range is ; for unstable modes the lower inequality already controls thermal time dependence. Large alone does not justify arbitrarily small .
Finally the local linear background is appropriate only if the perturbation penetration depth is shorter than its curvature length: . From the steady equation this ratio is . Thus for the actual exponentially heated profile, a sufficient local range at large is also . Otherwise evaluation of the base gradient at the displaced surface contributes an omitted term , and the simple quoted dispersion relation need not describe those long waves.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2002 iii Paper 55 3 Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-14
Measure upwards from the inlet and let now denote the specific latent heat of melting of the crust. Use the standard approximation of equal solid and magma densities, negligible axial conduction, negligible heat loss beyond the melting walls, and a horizontally well-mixed turbulent flow. The wall is at , so newly added wall melt enters with zero excess temperature .
For a slice of dike, total magma mass per unit height and out-of-plane length is . Both melting walls add mass at rate . Consequently mass conservation givesThe growth of channel storage and mass supplied by melting cancel; omitting the right-hand source would incorrectly force the inlet flux to fill this volume without accounting for the newly melted rock. Unequal densities would instead give and change the similarity model.
Let be heat transfer to each wall. As the original crust is already at , no sensible heating of unmelted crust is needed. Each wall moves outwards at speed , so its Stefan condition isExcess sensible-heat conservation, including both walls, isCombining these equations, with , givesThe term is the heat used to warm freshly melted wall material. It cannot simply be dropped from a conservative balance. This is melt-dilution heat balance in a dike.
At the inlet and . The wall balance there gives , where . At late times neglect in the widened basal region and setThe basal width and the vertical scale both grow as . Substituting into the wall condition givesConservative heat balance first gives . Eliminating with the wall equation yieldsThe boundary conditions are , , with in the outer idealized limit; the physical cooled branch also has . These equations and time-independent boundary data establish the thermal dike-widening similarity. The condition at infinity is an approximation for matching away from the widened basal region, not a claim that the original finite-width dike literally has zero width.
The inlet is a regular singular point of the first equation. Differentiating it and evaluating the second givesA regular expansion can still contain an undetermined higher-order coefficient, for example in ; the outer matching condition selects it. Thus specifying the inlet values does not eliminate the boundary-value aspect of the problem. If a computed branch reaches at finite similarity coordinate, that endpoint is treated as the edge of the widened inner region and matched to the unneglected original-width channel. One must not continue through zero width as a physical flow.
For numerical solution, formulate this as a nonlinear two-point boundary-value problem: start from a regular inlet expansion and adjust its free coefficient to meet the outer decay/matching condition, or solve for the profiles and boundary data together on a truncated or compactified similarity interval. Enforce nonnegative width and temperature excess, check any apparent singularity at , and refine the outer matching location until the basal profiles are insensitive to it. No specific algorithm is required.
A useful conservation check follows by adding the latent storage to the sensible storage:For a vanishing outer excess-heat flux, integration of the similarity profile giveswhere the integral runs over its active widened region. This checks the heat admitted at the base against latent and sensible storage. All factors of two refer to the two channel walls; is the full width.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2002 iii Paper 71 2 b Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-14
In the specified dust model , so and . Photons and the six neutrino/antineutrino helicity states giveUsing the supplied GeV estimates literally givesThe rounded time/temperature conversions are unusually crude: converting Gyr to and K to GeV instead gives . Either set gives the same order-of-magnitude mass conclusion below, but the numerical abundance should identify which supplied units are used.
For a stable relic, the relevant comparison is energy density, not merely particle number. The matter density left over after the baryons is at most nine times the baryon density here. ConsequentlyPut and use with . The condition becomesFor the literal supplied numbers the right side is about , giving and – GeV. With the physically consistent conversions the estimate is about GeV. The intended rough conclusion is therefore a sufficiently suppressed branch with no larger than order GeV, within the toy cosmological particle freeze-out law. Comparing the two number yields alone gives a similar rough scale but misses the mass weighting. This is a thermal relic density bound for a tunable fermion.
For , relativistic decoupling would instead leave , incompatible with the matter-density bound for such heavy stable particles. These are conditional bounds on a populated, stable thermal relic. A short lifetime or an initially suppressed nonthermal population can change the conclusion; the supplied information alone does not constrain every possible production and decay history.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2002 iii Paper 71 2 c Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-14
Above the transition,for . The ratio increases during cooling, rather than at higher temperature. A GUT transition at – GeV occurs well above this scale, so the interaction is too slow to establish or maintain thermal equilibrium throughout . In fact its integrated interaction probability from an arbitrarily high temperature down to is at most of order , since .
An initial Fermi-Dirac distribution with zero chemical potential therefore cannot be assumed from this high-temperature rate alone. If imposed initially and collisionlessly redshifted while the particles are massless, its thermal-looking form can persist, but this is not dynamically maintained thermal equilibrium. Other initial states can remain nonthermal. This is the thermalization temperature for a massless gauge mediator.
The below-transition rate stipulated in the model has . If and it includes efficient number-changing reactions, it can restore chemical equilibrium after the transition and erase the initial-state memory, making the estimates in a and b applicable. If it only equilibrates momenta, or if reheating never populates the relevant range, the thermal relic calculation must be reconsidered.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2002 iii Paper 71 7 b Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-14
There is a sign error in the printed synchronous line-of-sight integrand. Direct contraction of the stated decomposition gives , with a plus sign in its last term. In the positive spatial-perturbation convention of part a, the redshift term is half this contraction. The printed minus sign cannot yield the requested Newtonian expression with the supplied transformations.
The consistent identity can be derived explicitly. Work mode by mode with , along the unperturbed ray; the shift of the phase origin is immaterial. Put . Part a gives , while . Therefore . The corrected synchronous integral issince . This is the photon redshift identity with positive spatial perturbations.
The supplied fluid shifts are and . At emission, the synchronous intrinsic and Doppler terms are consequently . Adding the lower integral endpoint cancels the velocity shift and leaves . The upper endpoint is the local observer monopole/dipole , removed by temperature calibration and the observer-rest-frame convention. With zero anisotropic stress, , the observable higher-multipole result isAll fields are evaluated along the ray; the integral contains the time derivative at fixed spatial position. Retaining the printed negative angular term would leave the additional , generally a gauge-dependent, nonzero term. It is therefore not repaired merely by discarding observer monopole and dipole.
The first term is the intrinsic photon temperature perturbation, important in acoustic compressions and rarefactions. The velocity term is the Doppler shift and is prominent near acoustic, roughly degree and subdegree, scales; it is suppressed on very large scales. The potential at emission is the ordinary Sachs-Wolfe effect; combined with the intrinsic term it gives the familiar large-angle adiabatic matter-era result . The final term is the Integrated Sachs-Wolfe effect, caused by changing potentials. It vanishes for constant matter-era potentials, receives an early contribution near radiation-matter transition, and has an important late large-angle contribution when curvature or dark energy causes potentials to evolve. The sign of the Doppler term follows the photon-propagation direction convention used in the ray; reversing that direction reverses it consistently.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2003 iii Paper 50 5 a Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-14
Use units . In critical light-cone gauge in string theory, each chiral sector of the closed bosonic string has 24 transverse string oscillator species. Their generating function isEach factor sums the independent occupation numbers of the string oscillators at level . For with , the modular transformation of the Dedekind eta function givesExtract the coefficient by a contour integral and apply the saddle-point approximation to the exponent . The saddle is , with exponent and second derivative . The factor gives , and the Gaussian width gives . HenceFor a noncompact closed string, closed-string level matching imposes equal left and right levels, but does not correlate their transverse polarizations. Therefore the large-level degeneracy of a closed bosonic string isThe mass relation is . Thus withDistinguish degeneracy per discrete level from a smoothed density per unit rest mass. Since , the latter isThe exponential growth comes from the many ways of distributing string oscillator energy along a string; it is much faster than a fixed finite collection of particle species. The corresponding high-energy entropy is , so its microcanonical temperature tends to . Additional energy can go into very long strings rather than raising the temperature substantially.
The Boltzmann suppression competes with this exponential density. For the string oscillator rest-mass sum alone the large- tail is . It converges for and fails for . To include translational states in 25 noncompact spatial dimensions, take the one-string partition function per unit spatial volume. At large ,This follows by expanding the energy as and doing a Gaussian momentum integral. Its high-mass contribution is consequently proportional toThis integral is finite at , although nonanalytic there: its first twelve derivatives in are finite, while the thirteenth diverges. The endpoint expansion contains a term proportional to . Thus one must not assert that the canonical partition function necessarily diverges exactly at ; the polynomial prefactor and the spatial spectrum matter. This is the finite canonical partition function at the bosonic Hagedorn threshold distinction. The multi-string ideal gas has the same leading Hagedorn threshold, since the higher occupation-cycle terms probe , , and are nonsingular at .
There is also a spacetime diagnosis. Euclidean temperature makes time a circle of radius . A string oscillator ground state winding once around that circle, with zero momentum number, hasIt becomes massless at and tachyonic for . This thermal winding instability of a closed bosonic string signals failure of the perturbative low-temperature gas and motivates a transition to a different high-energy phase, often described in terms of long-string or winding-mode condensation. Free state counting fixes the threshold and its singular behavior, not the interacting phase's endpoint or the order of a transition.
Finally, the ordinary bosonic tachyon is already an infrared instability at zero temperature. The above canonical discussion is a formal analysis of the high-level spectrum with that separate infrared problem regulated. It does not establish a stable thermal vacuum of the unmodified bosonic theory; an actual equilibrium transition requires an appropriate stable setting and control of interactions.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2003 iii Paper 63 2 Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-14
The event rate counts unordered pairs of reacting nuclei. For unlike species there are pairs per unit-volume normalization; for identical species there are approximately pairs, since counting ordered pairs counts each collision twice. The Kronecker delta therefore supplies exactly the required divisor . It is the event rate, not the destruction rate of identical nuclei: one identical-pair reaction destroys two nuclei.
The temperature dependence combines the high-energy tail of the Maxwell-Boltzmann distribution with quantum tunnelling through the Coulomb barrier. The principal exponential factor in the energy integral is . Its stationary point, the Gamow peak, has and exponent . Integrating around this peak gives a prefactor proportional to , or , when the nuclear factor varies slowly. Thus the supplied thermonuclear reaction rate is locally proportional to . The slow weak interaction in the proton-proton reaction also makes its overall coefficient very small; its local thermal slope follows the supplied formula.
At fixed number densities, define the local temperature exponent of a thermonuclear reaction by a logarithmic derivative. Since ,For proton-proton reactions, and . At , and . For two helium-3 nuclei, and , giving and . For helium-3 with helium-4, and the same charge product gives and . HenceThese are local powers near the specified temperature, not constant exponents over an arbitrarily large range. The greater reduced nuclear mass in the reaction increases its tunnelling exponent and its thermal sensitivity.
For the effective proton-proton reaction network, denote the event rates byThe short-lived beryllium intermediate can be eliminated, so production through feeds , representing predominantly lithium-7. This rapid conversion is electron capture. Count the nuclei consumed and produced in each reaction: consumes two protons and makes one deuterium; consumes a proton and a deuterium and makes one helium-3; consumes two helium-3 and makes one helium-4 and two protons; consumes one of each helium isotope; consumes a proton and lithium-7 and makes two helium-4. It follows thatFor closure, . These nuclear terms conserve , providing an independent stoichiometric check. They describe a fixed local volume; compression or mixing would add transport terms.
The roughly one-second destruction time of deuterium is negligible compared with the proton-burning and helium-3 evolution times. Its abundance rapidly adjusts to the slowly evolving production rate. Set , giving the deuterium quasi-equilibrium in proton-proton burningSubstitution, without setting , givesThe helium-3 relaxation time of about years is likewise short compared with the central proton-burning time and the age of the Sun. On this relaxation time the proton and helium-4 abundances, and the background temperature, can be treated as fixed. Put , , . Then , and its nonnegative equilibrium isThe other root is negative and unphysical. Write and subtract the equilibrium equation. Exactly, for a fixed background,Dropping the quadratic displacement givesThus small displacements decay exponentially. A slowly moving equilibrium introduces an additional term, negligible to leading order when is short compared with background evolution.
To estimate the temperature for helium-3 freeze-out, use the cooler pp-I-dominated region and neglect compared with . Then and . With the local powers just obtained and fixed proton number density, and . Adopting givesThis is an order-of-magnitude extrapolation of local exponents. Keeping the supplied exponential factors gives the helium-3 freeze-out estimate with Gamow factorswhich yields about with the same normalization and fixed-density approximation. Thus the robust estimate is several million kelvin. The supplied data do not fix the local density, composition or pp-II fraction away from the centre, so they cannot determine an exact transition temperature or radius. In particular, using alone would omit the temperature dependence of the equilibrium helium-3 abundance.
The solar hydrogen and helium-3 abundance profiles follow from burning, finite equilibration time and convection. Central hydrogen has been consumed, so is lowest in the centre and increases toward its much less processed outer value. In the hot centre, rapid destruction keeps helium-3 small. Moving outward initially raises its equilibrium abundance because rises strongly as temperature falls. Further out, equilibration is no longer reached within the solar age, and still farther out even production is slow. Hence has an off-centre maximum and then declines toward its small outer abundance. The outer convective envelope mixes each abundance toward a constant value.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2003 iii Paper 71 4 a Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-14
Set , , and . To keep dimensions and the thermal amplitude explicit, write the force covariance as . The printed unit coefficient is a choice of noise normalization, not a general dimensional thermal force. Assume the initial velocity is independent of the future white noise. The Underdamped Langevin dynamics has integrating-factor solutionTaking its expectation and using the delta covariance in the double integral givesHere the noise contribution is . The equipartition theorem requires the long-time value . Consequently the fluctuation-dissipation relation for a Langevin particle isWith an initially thermal velocity, and , so the velocity variance is stationary. If one insists on the printed coefficient in dimensional units, the model has temperature fixed by in those units; it cannot describe arbitrary temperature while retaining that coefficient.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2003 iii Paper 73 2 Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-14
Let point from fluid to fluid , , , and . A clean material interface without phase change has continuous velocity, with normal interface speed . Its surface stress is . The surface divergence of that tensor is . Balancing forces on a small interfacial patch therefore gives the interfacial stress balance with variable surface tensionThe normal condition is ; the tangential condition is . On a stationary sphere with outward normal these reduce to when viscous normal stresses vanish. This fixes the sign convention for the Marangoni stress rather than leaving the direction ambiguous.
For the bubble take negligible internal dynamic viscosity, no contaminants, and initially the standard effectively insulating gas-bubble approximation. With heat advection neglected, the exterior temperature satisfies Laplace's equation, approaches remotely, and has zero normal heat flux at . The temperature dipole around an insulating sphere givesThe zero-flux condition follows by differentiating the radial factor. Let . To first order in the weak gradient,
In the laboratory frame the force-free bubble can be described by the harmonic Papkovich–Neuber representation potentialsThey give constant exterior pressure and the decaying source dipole fieldAt the surface , so the normal kinematic boundary condition holds for translation. In coordinates aligned with , and . Direct differentiation givesEquivalently, the surface tangential traction is . The tangential stress condition therefore requiresFor the usual negative , the bubble moves toward hotter liquid. The normal condition is consistent as well: its viscous dipole is , exactly the dipolar part of . The constant part fixes . There is no Stokeslet term, hence no net applied force or drag imbalance.
The thermal assumption matters. The problem gives the exterior thermal diffusivity but no gas thermal conductivity. For an inviscid bubble with conductivity ratio , temperature and normal heat-flux continuity instead giveso the same stress calculation givesThe insulating-bubble result uses . If instead an undisturbed surface temperature gradient is imposed, corresponding to , the coefficient is rather than . Exterior thermal diffusivity alone does not select between those thermal boundary conditions. This dependence is explicit rather than silently treating a missing gas property as a prescribed value.
The small parameters can now be stated precisely. With and , requireSmall Reynolds number justifies Stokes flow; small Péclet number allows quasi-static heat conduction without advective distortion; small capillary number and fractional surface-tension variation support a nearly spherical interface and a weak perturbation of its base surface tension. These last two conditions are proportional for this velocity scale but describe different approximations. Linearizing also needs if its derivative varies appreciably. Negligible internal viscosity and the insulating specialization require the corresponding gas-to-liquid viscosity and conductivity ratios to be small. Gravity has been excluded; if restored, its buoyancy-induced migration must be small compared with , not merely small enough to avoid deformation.
Finally, surfactants change both the constitutive surface tension and the surface stress dynamics. The surface flow driven by the thermal Marangoni effect carries insoluble surfactant toward the high-tension side, lowering its tension and producing an opposing concentration-driven gradient. When surface diffusion or exchange is slow, this tends to immobilize the interface, suppressing the clean-bubble thermocapillary migration of an insulating bubble, sometimes nearly stopping it. If the surfactant stays uniformly equilibrated, it can instead change without a large opposing gradient. Its concentration, surface diffusivity and adsorption kinetics must be supplied to compute a replacement speed; no universal numerical reduction factor follows merely from its presence.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2003 iii Paper 77 1 Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-14
Write , and . The first balance is depth-integrated momentum conservation. Its left side is the downstream increase of horizontal momentum flux. The wind contributes the applied stress ; the remaining term is the resultant hydrostatic force associated with the sloping base of the light layer. Because , that term opposes the wind when .
For a strip of unit alongshore width and length , let be the entrained ocean-volume flux per unit area. Ocean entering the layer carries temperature and concentration but no horizontal momentum in this model. Take the reference liquid enthalpy at to be zero and setThe latent term is negative because ice has lower enthalpy than liquid at the same temperature. The incoming entrained water has zero relative enthalpy, and the outgoing minus incoming horizontal enthalpy flux is . Atmospheric heat loss therefore gives . Similarly, solute conservation givesThese are the second and third balances. Their reference-flux form has already subtracted the heat and solute brought in by entrainment; those fluxes must not be subtracted again.
There is a dimensional normalization to make explicit. With the printed specific , the physical heat-flux balance is . Thus . The displayed exam equation uses its symbol for , or implicitly works with density-normalized heat flux. The derivation below uses to keep these two meanings distinct.
With no incoming coastal jet or ice source, the conditions at areThe regular emerging layer also has , , and . Prescribed nonzero inlet fluxes would replace these conditions and destroy the coast-origin power law. A zero-thickness coast does not justify independently prescribing an arbitrary nonzero velocity there.
Integration of the solute and enthalpy balances yields wherever , and . Local phase equilibrium now givesFor , putTo leading order, . The potential-energy closure implies , and substituting it in the momentum equation givesDividing the ice flux by this last relation gives . If , , momentum gives , while the potential-energy balance gives . Thus . Substitution fixes the coefficients:This is the dilute frazil polynya similarity solution. In particular, all three variables grow as , grows as , and the solution stops being dilute when is no longer small. Density differences have been retained in buoyancy, but not in inertia or the normalized heat capacity.
To account for upward settling, one must distinguish retained suspension from crystals that leave it. A consistent depth-averaged extension has an upward exported ice-volume flux and an entrainment flux . If all phases retain the same mean horizontal velocity within the layer, its balances becomeThe last term removes the momentum carried out by the ice; its density may be restored to outside the Boussinesq approximation. Consequentlyso one may no longer set . The local equilibrium relations are unchanged, but use the new bulk concentration. The frazil export enthalpy balance also shows why a simple replacement has the wrong sign: exported ice carries negative relative enthalpy.
A slip speed requires a vertical particle-flux closure, for example for a well-mixed top boundary. A nonuniform suspension instead requires its surface concentration and buoyancy moment. The potential-energy closure must then include the gravitational energy released by rising light crystals, with scale , and any energy and buoyancy moment carried through the boundaries. For example, a well-mixed closure that transfers a fraction of this released power to entrainment and neglects additional boundary potential-energy transport would replace the original work balance byThe allocation and exported potential-energy flux are extra closure information, not supplied constants of the original model. The original work balance cannot be retained unchanged while treating settling as an additional loss of suspended ice. Phase-dependent horizontal speeds would also replace and by their separate phase fluxes.
It is important to compare total production, not merely the retained ice flux. LetIntegrated solute conservation gives , henceIntegrating the heat balance, and neglecting products of the small concentration departure with the exported flux, givesto dilute order, provided the total processed fraction , not only the retained fraction , remains small. Thus upward settling reduces retained suspension, but does not increase the leading-order total production at fixed atmospheric heat loss. Beyond that order, efficient removal can reduce the subsequent sensible cooling of crystals and enhance mixing of ocean water; the usual expectation is a larger latent-heat fraction and hence greater production. Its amount, or an unconditional larger/smaller claim, needs the settling, mixing and surface-export closures just identified. At fixed , energy conservation bounds the production by the available heat loss; it must not be inferred simply by observing fewer suspended crystals.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2003 iii Paper 77 2 Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-14
Use , and , with . Equal reference densities and constant material properties are implicit in these diffusion balances. Put and . The four similarity fields areHere the same letters on the right denote their far-field values. Substitution into the heat and solute diffusion equations verifies the fields; their interface values and far-field limits verify every boundary condition. The concentration has an equilibrium jump from to , whereas temperature is continuous.
The interfacial conservation laws areFor example,Since , dividing the two jump conditions by gives, for nonzero ,where . At , use the undivided flux conditions or the continuous limit, rather than divide by zero. The liquidus relation and the segregation coefficient also give the solidus .
For the thermal expansion, write and useKeeping the constant terms in these reciprocals is essential for the full first-order answer. The result isThe remainder has this form for bounded ; a looser statement is also valid in the distinguished scaling . Dropping the temperature-difference term while claiming first-order accuracy for fixed would be incorrect.
Solving the solute balance algebraically givesFor fixed positive , , and , with a positive exponentially small correction. For fixed negative , , andIt falls from as to zero as . The outer positive branch is zero. For finite the transition is rounded over ; the exact zero-speed limit is , not an actual concentration discontinuity.
To count speeds, take the leading distinguished thermal balance, set and , and combine with the thermal result:This is the intended leading approximation when and . The full first-order expression instead replaces by . Thus the printed threshold is asymptotic, not an exact criterion for finite .
For , put . The small-solid-diffusivity melting concentration is , soThe second term decreases strictly from to zero. One can check the strict decrease without guessing its shape. Set , so , , and . Direct differentiation givesThe bracket increases with on . Substituting its lower bound yields a polynomial with constant coefficient and all other coefficients positive. Hence , as claimed.
If , then and increases from zero to infinity. The freezing branch has and is also monotone. Together these give one speed for each imposed sum within the approximation. If , the melting branch initially decreases, has exactly one minimum and then increases to infinity. For sums between that minimum and zero there are two melting speeds plus one freezing speed: three solutions. At the lower fold there are two distinct speeds, one being a double solution. At zero the limiting outer branches join; finite solid diffusivity rounds the join into a nearby fold. Away from the fold values the other sums have one solution. At the threshold itself the initial slope vanishes; it is the transition between these cases.
For , the solution is on the melting branch . Its thermal layers have scale , much larger than the liquid-solute scale . Because the front is retreating, the solid solute layer is thinner still:This follows by expanding the large-positive-argument complementary error function ratio on the solid side: near , its decay length is . Using simply would miss the retreating-front compression of that layer.
Across this narrow layer, solid concentration drops from almost to , while temperature stays almost . At the interface . Moving slightly into the solid increases its concentration toward , lowering its solidus to , whereas the temperature has barely changed. Since and , . Thus an adjacent region can satisfy : constitutional superheating. Its existence is especially clear when far-field solid is initially stable but heat diffuses across the narrow composition layer.
The phase-diagram path goes from through a broad thermal rise, then nearly horizontally toward across the thin solid diffusion layer. At the interface it traverses the isothermal equilibrium tie line to . On the liquid side concentration falls to zero over the liquid-solute layer, while the remaining thermal adjustment to takes place over the much wider heat layer. The path of the depleted solid approaches the solidus from its superheated side. That region should melt at additional sites or develop a two-phase mushy layer; the original single-boundary similarity construction is then a mathematical branch rather than a physically stable description of the entire sample.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2003 iii Paper 77 3 Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-14
Take an attractive nonretarded molecular potential , with molecular number densities . Its force magnitude is . For one molecule at height above a half-space, integration over cylindrical radius and depth givesIts downward force is . A sphere's horizontal cross-section a distance above its bottom has area , so its total attractive force isFor the near-bottom region dominates. Replacing its area by and extending the upper limit givesThis derives the sphere-plane dispersion force from the pairwise Van der Waals force. Hereafter denotes the magnitude of the effective repulsive interaction across water, rather than the signed attractive Hamaker constant. Its planar pressure magnitude is .
For a nearly planar freezing front, the spherical gap is . In the particle frame the incoming normal motion has speed . Axisymmetric mass conservation gives the outward gap flux per circumference . The lubrication flux law therefore givesIntegrating its axial force givesSteady particle pushing by a freezing front requires , and henceThe viscous drag is not the isolated-sphere Stokes drag: its divergence as the gap closes is essential.
For the deformed interface let and measure from the sphere's downward pole, as in the original geometry. The height below the remote melting isotherm is . Under the imposed temperature gradient, the undercooling is . With capillary depression neglected, the local phase-equilibrium pressure isHere is the absolute melting temperature; a constant reference ice density is used in the thermomolecular relation. ThusThe numerical value of will cancel from the speed relation.
In the thin spherical film, incompressibility and the incoming normal velocity giveSymmetry supplies zero pole flux. The tangential Couette contribution is smaller by and is negligible at this order. Applying the pressure-driven flux law along arclength giveswhere pressure is matched to the outer liquid at .
A cap area element is and its vertical normal component is . Put . The upward molecular and downward hydraulic forces are thereforeBalancing these forces establishes premelted-film particle pushing:The factorizations are and . They confirm positivity on the physical cap range and provide a numerically better-conditioned shallow-cap expression. Since , the shallow-cap limit within is ; it is not a limit in which the film can be identified with the flat-front gap .
The local film formula diverges right at the rim . Accordingly the thin-film calculation is an outer approximation away from a small matching fringe, not a claim of a uniformly thin film at its contact with bulk water. Both integrated stress densities vanish at that rim; in the thin-film limit the fringe contributes only a higher-order correction. Surface-tension curvature, altered thermal gradients or appreciable density-change fluxes would require a different balance.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2004 iii Paper 57 1 Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-20
A stationary black hole behaves mechanically like an equilibrium thermodynamic system. Its horizon area A, asymptotic energy E, angular momentum J and electric charge Q are linked by the laws of black-hole mechanics. Let generate its Killing horizon, with the time translation normalized at infinity; its surface gravity is defined by on that horizon. We use and keep G explicit. The horizon electrostatic potential is measured relative to infinity.
The Zeroth law of black-hole mechanics states that kappa is constant on each connected stationary horizon, under the Einstein equations and suitable energy/regularity assumptions. It parallels the zeroth law of thermodynamics, which makes temperature uniform in equilibrium. Kappa need not be constant in a dynamical geometry. For an asymptotically flat static hole, local observers see gravitationally redshifted temperatures; the equilibrium quantity comparable to kappa is the temperature referenced to infinity.
The First law of black-hole mechanics relates nearby stationary solutions:The same leading relation describes a small physical process which perturbs a horizon and subsequently settles to equilibrium, with the appropriate hypotheses on fluxes and final state. The work terms correspond to rotational and electromagnetic work. The structural analogy with the first law of thermodynamics, , identifies area as an entropy-like variable and surface gravity as a temperature-like variable. Classically this fixes their product in the first law, rather than their separate normalizations.
The second law of black-hole mechanics, or black-hole area theorem, states that future event-horizon area does not decrease classically. Its essential geometric ingredient is the Raychaudhuri equation for affinely parametrized null generators. In four dimensions a hypersurface-orthogonal congruence obeysThe null energy condition and Einstein equations make the last term nonpositive. If the expansion became negative, the inequality would focus the generators to a conjugate point in finite affine parameter. Under future completeness and predictability assumptions, that would conflict with their remaining on an achronal event horizon. Thus , and the area element, satisfying , cannot decrease. For a merger the final area is at least the sum of the initial component areas. These assumptions matter: the theorem is a classical statement, not a prohibition of quantum evaporation.
The third law of black-hole mechanics is an unattainability statement: a nonextremal hole cannot be driven to zero surface gravity in a finite physical process satisfying the usual bounded-stress and regularity conditions. This parallels the unattainability form of the third law of thermodynamics. Extremal stationary solutions exist, so the law concerns how an initially nonextremal hole approaches them. The stronger entropy form of Nernst's theorem does not transfer unchanged: extremal holes can have finite area and entropy, depending on their conserved charges.
Quantum field theory turns the mechanical analogy into a physical thermodynamic identification. Hawking radiation is thermal at infinity to leading semiclassical order, withThese give exactly, so the mechanical first law becomes the thermodynamic first law with Bekenstein-Hawking entropy. Scattering through the exterior adds greybody factors to the emitted spectrum but leaves this temperature identification intact. Equilibrium with an external bath and isolated evaporation are different physical states of the field.
During black-hole evaporation, the area can decrease because the semiclassical stress tensor need not satisfy the classical null energy condition. The proposed generalized second law applies instead to , asserting nondecrease of the combined entropy. A Schwarzschild hole illustrates an unusual thermodynamic property: , so its heat capacity is negative. It becomes hotter as it loses energy and is unstable in a simple canonical heat bath, while entropy and energy laws still describe an isolated system. The quantum temperature, area entropy and generalized second law supply the correspondence; the mechanical laws alone do not establish a thermal emission spectrum or a microscopic entropy count.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2004 iii Paper 57 4 vi Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-14
In natural units, periodic Euclidean time of period beta is the inverse temperature of a thermal quantum state. The horizon regularity calculation therefore gives the Hawking temperatureThis agrees with the radiation calculation based on the near-horizon redshift. Restoring constants with multiplies the expression by . In the neutral case ; the temperature is positive for every nonextremal outer horizon.
The extremal limit is different. At , , so the proper Euclidean radial distance to the horizon diverges logarithmically. This extremal Euclidean throat is an infinite end, with no finite polar origin on which to impose the cone-removal condition. Local smoothness therefore does not select a finite period by the preceding argument. The vanishing surface gravity and the nonextremal limit give , rather than a universally nonzero temperature for all horizon solutions. A geometry with has no black-hole horizon and no Hawking temperature inferred from this horizon argument.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2004 iii Paper 60 3 a Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-14
Write and use modes satisfying all boundary conditions,The quadratic temperature distortion is retained for the saturation calculation; it does not enter the linear onset. Substitution of the primary modes givesThe determinant vanishes whenThe trace is . Thus no conjugate eigenvalues can cross the imaginary axis away from zero, and the initial instability is stationary, not oscillatory. Indeed for the discriminant is . This is quasistatic vertical-field magnetoconvection: there is no independent magnetic evolution mode that could produce a magnetic-thermal Hopf bifurcation instability.
For a fixed box the other allowed horizontal wavenumbers are , and the actual first threshold is the minimum of their corresponding values. Vertical index replaces by and strictly increases the threshold at fixed horizontal wavenumber, so is selected. The displayed formula describes the prescribed fundamental roll; part (b) optimizes its width.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2004 iii Paper 60 3 c Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-14
The primary vorticity Jacobian determinant vanishes because . The quadratic temperature Jacobian determinant isThe mean temperature correction therefore obeys . Its Jacobian determinant with the primary streamfunction isProjecting on the retained primary modes gives, with ,For a nonzero steady roll, and . Substitution in the second equation gives, within this truncation,The positive denominator ensures branches only on the supercritical side for every . To verify dynamical stability as well as existence, the critical right eigenvector is ; normalizing the left eigenvector gives linear eigenvalue derivativeQuadratic slaving gives , and projection of its feedback gives the cubic amplitude equationIts nonzero branches are stable in the center direction, while all other eigenvalues remain negative at a simple onset. Reflection about the mid-width sends , so the bifurcation is a supercritical pitchfork bifurcation for all , in the generic case of a single critical roll mode.
The cubic saturation of quasistatic magnetoconvection result is identical in Fourier truncation and perturbation theory at the orders needed here. At quadratic order the only forced mode is precisely the retained horizontally uniform temperature mode. At cubic order its feedback projects on the primary mode with the same coefficient. The generated third vertical harmonic is orthogonal to that primary projection and contributes only to higher-order corrections. Thus both methods give the same linear threshold and cubic solvability condition; the truncated finite-amplitude branch is not an exact solution of the full PDE at all amplitudes.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2004 iii Paper 67 3 c Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-14
There is a genuine flux typo in the original PDF. A received bolometric radiative flux must have inverse-square luminosity distance, so the physically consistent thermal bremsstrahlung expression is . The printed single power of cannot imply the requested Hubble constant scaling.
For an approximately uniform, spherical galaxy cluster let its depth be , where is a fixed geometrical factor. With fixed profile coefficients , the Rayleigh-Jeans law limit of the thermal Sunyaev-Zeldovich effect and the bolometric X-ray radiative flux giveEliminate the electron number density and use :The cluster distance from Sunyaev-Zeldovich and X-ray signals is consequentlyAt low cosmological redshift, , sowhen the other observables and profile parameters are held fixed. With the PDF's literal instead, , independent of distance: this explicitly shows why the correction is necessary.
Real galaxy clusters are neither uniform nor generally spherical. The inferred depth depends on the ratio of line of sight depth to transverse extent; elongation and orientation selection therefore bias the distance. density clumps enhance X-ray emission, which weights , more than the thermal Sunyaev-Zeldovich effect, which weights . An unmodelled gas clumping factor greater than one makes the inferred distance too small and the inferred Hubble constant too large in this simple model. Temperature gradients and multiple thermal components bias the X-ray spectral temperature relative to the pressure-weighted Compton y parameter. Metals alter the cooling spectrum, and finite X-ray bands require a spectral and redshift correction to the bolometric approximation. Relativistic thermal corrections, the kinetic Sunyaev-Zeldovich effect, radio sources and primary Cosmic microwave background anisotropy contaminate the signal. Finally, calibration, angular-profile fitting and low-redshift peculiar velocities affect the observables and the relation between measured redshift and expansion distance.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2004 iii Paper 67 4 c Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-14
Use absorption distance and its distribution . Summing hydrogen columns per unit gives . The physical light-path length per isThe mean neutral-hydrogen number density is therefore . Divide by to obtain its comoving density, multiply by hydrogen atomic mass, and divide by today's mass critical density . This derives the neutral gas density from an absorption distribution:If “neutral gas” includes helium, replace by , with a stated abundance correction approximately . Equivalently, for the distribution per redshift the prefactor inside the integral is multiplying . In the PDF's energy-density convention, both the mass density and critical density are multiplied by , leaving their ratio unchanged. The usual quoted abundance uses comoving mass density relative to today's critical density; a ratio of physical density to the epoch's critical density instead multiplies this answer by .
To infer total gas, one needs the neutral fraction for each absorber. The ionized gas density from an absorption distribution isThis is an ionization-corrected integral, not an inference available from the observed columns alone. For optically thin, almost fully ionized hydrogen, photoionization equilibrium gives . If the absorbing depth is specified, andThus photoionization rate, temperature and depth are all needed.
One useful physical closure sets to a local Jeans length, , with local gas fraction . Solving then gives the Jeans-length ionization correction for the Lyman-alpha forest:This illustrates why weak, highly ionized forest lines can dominate the total gas inventory even though damped Lyman-alpha systems dominate the neutral-column-weighted inventory. It is a model for locally confined optically thin gas; optically thick Lyman limit systems and damped Lyman-alpha systems require a separate radiative transfer treatment. The physical basis and observational application of this closure are developed in Schaye's absorption-based matter-density calculation.




