Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2016 iii Paper 333 3 iv Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-06
Take , a uniform eastward , and the nondivergent Barotropic Rossby wave model. Its dispersion relation is . A stationary wave with hasThe directional component wavelengths are and when nonzero. Differentiating the full dispersion relation before imposing stationarity gives its ground-frame group velocity:Writing , shows . Therefore the stationary Rossby-wave ray envelope at time , for wave packets emitted from a localized mountain throughout , is the diskThe circle is the front of the earliest emissions; later emissions fill ray segments back to the source. The sketch represents the geometrical wave packet envelope, not compact support of the full balanced near field. All propagating wave packet energy lies downstream in this model.
Downstream ray envelope of stationary barotropic Rossby waves emitted by a mountain between zero and the observation time
. If the finite-depth free-surface model of the preceding part is retained consistently, its basic surface slope adds to the potential-vorticity gradient. Stationarity still gives and the same wavelength, but the group velocity is reduced by ; the disk center and radius become . This tends to the plotted nondivergent result as .
A westward wind has no nontrivial stationary propagating planetary Rossby-wave train in this model: would require . Its advective phase motion and intrinsic westward Rossby wave phase motion cannot cancel. A local forced, evanescent response and time-dependent disturbances can still occur. The degenerate limit is not a propagating wave train from an isolated mountain.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2017 ib Paper 4 18D Solution Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-10-06
Write and , so the PDF's vector potential vorticity is . The local TeX loses some of this boldface. Taking the vertical curl of the momentum equation gives , while mass conservation gives . ThusThis is the linear perturbation of shallow-water potential vorticity, scaled by ; it should not be confused with the full nonlinear conserved ratio .
Since , taking the divergence of momentum gives . Differentiate mass conservation and use to obtainFor , substitution of the stated plane wave gives the linear rotating shallow-water dispersion relation, with :The two even branches approach at large and have values at . The original dispersion diagram below also compares the speed magnitudes.
For , the phase velocity and group velocity magnitudes areThe printed convention means the signed phase velocity is and the signed group velocity is . The speed magnitudes above are independent of that sign convention.
For , longer wavelengths have greater phase velocity but smaller group velocity: individual crests and wave packets therefore answer “faster or slower” differently. At long wavelength, , the frequency is nearly the inertial frequency , , and . Rotation has its largest relative effect here, and the waves are strongly dispersive. At short wavelength, , both speeds tend to and rotation gives only a small, weakly dispersive correction. If , the gravity waves are nondispersive, with speed ; at the phase velocity formula is undefined.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2017 ib Paper 4 6B a Solution Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-10-05
The wavefunction is a plane wave and a simultaneous formal eigenfunction of the momentum operator and the time-translation energy operator:Its momentum and energy are therefore definite, while its probability density is spatially uniform:For a particle of mass , the probability current is , directed according to the sign of .
On the whole real line, a nonzero constant-amplitude plane wave is not square-integrable and cannot be normalised to total probability one. It represents an idealised momentum eigenstate, interpreted through generalized eigenfunctions or as a limit of wave packets. Also, arbitrary do not automatically solve the Schrodinger equation for a specified potential energy: for a free particle, , or this value plus the constant potential energy for a constant-potential region. If , the zero function is not a physical quantum state.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2017 iii Paper 301 1 d Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-05
The oscillator-generated covariant photon Fock space has an indefinite Hermitian form, not a positive Hilbert space inner product. For a normalizable one-photon wave packet of polarization , its squared norm is proportional to . Thus gives a negative-norm photon state. The divergent of an unsmeared momentum eigenstate is a separate normalization issue, avoided by the wave packet.
Choose contravariant polarization vectors , , and two with for . The third spatial polarization is longitudinal polarization; the first two are transverse polarization. The timelike photon polarization is distinct from the longitudinal one.
The Gupta-Bleuler quantization condition sets the divergence of the positive-frequency part of a quantum field to zero on physical states:Restore the factors to the annihilation terms. Since and , Fourier transform gives the equivalent conditionIts sign depends on the chosen sign of the longitudinal polarization vector; the covariant condition does not.
To see its content for a general Fock state, temporarily discretize momentum and decompose one unphysical oscillator sector as , where . The temporal oscillator obeys , while . The condition therefore becomesEquivalently, the allowed finite-particle states use the transverse creation operators and only in the unphysical sector. Indeed the constraint acts on a polynomial of the two unphysical creation operators as , whose kernel consists of polynomials in their difference. Also , and a state containing is orthogonal to every constrained state because annihilates every such state. This argument applies mode by mode and extends by smearing to continuum momentum.
For one photon, is constrained only when , producing a null state. The Gupta-Bleuler null-state quotient removes these null directions. The condition excludes negative-norm physical states; quotienting its null states leaves the two positive-norm transverse photon polarizations. The condition alone gives a positive semidefinite Hermitian form, not yet a positive definite Hilbert space.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2017 iii Paper 305 1 b Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-05
Assume a complete relativistically normalized basis of scalar momentum eigenstates transforms asThis states both reversal of spatial momentum and preservation of the normalization of basis quantum states. Antilinearity alone would not suffice: multiplying a conjugation operator by two gives an antilinear operator that multiplies squared norms by four.
Expand and similarly for , with . This Lorentz-invariant phase-space measure is unchanged under . The antilinearity of the quantum time-reversal operator gives conjugated expansion coefficients. Orthogonality of the momentum eigenstates and cancellation of their unit-modulus phases yieldSince momentum reversal is a bijection of the complete basis, is also onto. ThusThis proves antiunitarity, with the normalization hypothesis explicitly included. For scalar multiparticle quantum states the same argument uses the complete occupation-state basis and reverses all momenta; it is not restricted to a single-particle wave packet.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2017 iii Paper 311 4 Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-06
Work first in units . Black-hole thermodynamics starts with the laws of black-hole mechanics. For a connected stationary regular Killing horizon, the Zeroth law of black-hole mechanics makes its surface gravity constant when the Einstein field equations and dominant energy condition hold. This parallels uniform equilibrium temperature. For neighboring stationary asymptotically flat four-dimensional Einstein-Maxwell black holes, the First law of black-hole mechanics iswhere is the horizon angular velocity and its electric potential relative to infinity. The last terms are rotational and electromagnetic work, analogous to the work terms in . The second law of black-hole mechanics, expressed by Hawking's area theorem, makes the total future horizon area nondecreasing for classical matter obeying the null energy condition and global assumptions such as strong asymptotic predictability. The third law of black-hole mechanics is an unattainability statement: subject to the usual regularity assumptions, the weak energy condition, and a bounded stress-energy tensor, no finite physical process reduces the surface gravity of a regular horizon to zero. It does not assert that extremal black holes have zero area or zero entropy.
Classical geometry alone fixes an analogy, not a nonzero physical temperature. Quantum field theory supplies Hawking temperature . Comparing the area term of the first law with gives for nonextremal holes, and hence the standard Bekenstein-Hawking entropy. Restoring physical constants,Here restored is the physical acceleration surface gravity and is the squared Planck length. The first-law comparison determines the area coefficient, leaving an additive entropy constant unspecified; the displayed formula is the usual convention. Its area scaling, rather than ordinary volume scaling, signals that the available thermodynamic degrees of freedom of a gravitating system are constrained by the horizon geometry.
Particle production explains the quantum input. For a real scalar field obeying the massless covariant wave equation, the Klein-Gordon inner product on solutions isThe wave equation makes its current divergence-free, so the product is independent of a Cauchy hypersurface when the boundary flux vanishes. Use suitably normalized wave packets or the appropriate continuum distributions. Asymptotic past and future Minkowski spacetimes give preferred positive-frequency solution mode bases and , normalized by , and . Between those regions, a nonstationary geometry generally has no preferred positive-frequency splitting.
The mode bases are related by a Bogoliubov transformation,The last identities follow from conservation of the Klein-Gordon inner product and are the canonical identities for a bosonic Bogoliubov transformation. Expanding the field in either complete basis and extracting its positive-frequency coefficient givesThus the state annihilated by every hasThis particle number from Bogoliubov coefficients is nonzero when time evolution mixes positive and negative frequencies. It describes one state as vacuum in the early particle basis and populated in the late basis; it does not require an arbitrary choice of a vacuum at each intermediate time. For a finite implementable transformation the state remains a squeezed pure quantum state. In infinitely many modes, a common unitary bosonic Fock space implementation requires additional conditions, such as the beta map being a Hilbert-Schmidt operator; finite wave packet observables need not share every global divergence of an ideal continuum calculation.
For gravitational collapse, the future is not globally Minkowski: it contains a black hole. The relevant late out-basis includes modes reaching future null infinity together with modes entering the future event horizon. Modes on infinity alone are not a complete Cauchy basis. Nevertheless the same mode-mixing calculation determines the outgoing particle flux. Near a nonextremal horizon, the logarithm in the tortoise coordinate converts regular early null coordinates into the Hawking exponential ray mapwhere is the early affine null coordinate and is late retarded time at infinity. Backward propagation of a late outgoing mode gives a factor for . Its positive- and negative-frequency Fourier integrals differ by analytic continuation around the logarithmic branch. With a convergence regulator they reduce toTaking gives the thermal ratio of Hawking Bogoliubov coefficients, . Combining this with the canonical normalization yields the bosonic occupation . Late-time wave packets turn formal continuum coefficients into a finite number flux.
A Schwarzschild black hole has , so this spectrum has . The exterior curvature potential partly reflects the outgoing modes. Its transmission probabilities are the greybody factors, giving, for one massless scalar species in the stationary late-time approximation,Thus the horizon temperature is universal, while the spectrum received at infinity is not a perfect featureless blackbody radiation spectrum. The derivation assumes the near-horizon quantum state inherited from a regular collapse vacuum and ignores rapid backreaction over the timescale of the packets. Exponentially blueshifted precursor frequencies indicate the usual short-distance assumption in the semiclassical calculation, not an independently demonstrated quantum-gravity description of the endpoint.
The outgoing positive energy flux drives black-hole evaporation. At leading order for a large isolated Schwarzschild black hole, area scales as and temperature as , giving and a lifetime of order , with the coefficient depending on species and transmission factors. Its negative heat capacity of a Schwarzschild black hole, , means that it heats up as it loses mass and cannot be in stable canonical equilibrium with an unlimited thermal reservoir. The approximation fails when quantum-gravitational scales are reached and does not fix whether the endpoint is complete evaporation, a remnant, or something else.
Area loss does not contradict the classical area theorem, because the quantum stress-energy tensor need not obey the classical null energy condition; negative horizon energy accompanies the positive outgoing flux. The appropriate thermodynamic statement is the generalized second law, involving . Finally, Hawking radiation raises the black hole information paradox: if a pure quantum state completely evaporates into an exactly thermal mixed quantum state and its partners disappear, the result conflicts with ordinary unitary time evolution. Early outgoing radiation can be mixed simply because of its entanglement with interior modes while the complete state remains a pure quantum state; that fact alone is not information loss. Resolving the fate of all correlations through the evaporation endpoint requires more than the leading semiclassical flux calculation.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2017 iii Paper 331 3 a ii Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-06
At the absolute wavenumber, the group velocity is zero. The corresponding accessible saddle therefore governs the disturbance seen at a fixed position. Its exponential growth rate isSaddle accessibility can be checked directly here. With , whose real part is positive, Fourier inversion gives the Green function of the linear complex Ginzburg-Landau equation,At fixed its exponential rate is , while along the packet centre it is . For real wavenumbers of Fourier modes, the temporal growth rate is , so the flow is temporally unstable exactly when .
Consequently the classifications for a localized disturbance in this laboratory frame areFor convective hydrodynamic instability, a travelling wave packet amplifies but the response at each fixed position decays. For absolute hydrodynamic instability, that fixed-position response amplifies. The equality is the marginal absolute threshold: its exponential rate is zero and the impulse response has a prefactor. For there is no temporal growth; is temporally marginal. When the convective window is empty. These conclusions use the infinite-line impulse problem; a general dispersion relation requires its own spatial-branch or saddle selection.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2017 ii Paper 1 33C Solution Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-10-05
The normalized Bloch states satisfy periodicity when . Acting with the hopping terms shifts the coefficients by one site, givingThe first Brillouin zone is a fundamental cell of reciprocal space, for example ; wavevectors differing by label the same state. It contains exactly distinct allowed wavevectors and hence orbital states. The written Hamiltonian has no spin index; if electron spin degeneracy is included there are states.
For a narrow wave packet, group velocity and band-curvature effective mass areFor the usual , the mass is negative in the outer half of the zone, , taking one endpoint representative. At the inverse mass vanishes and the mass diverges. For arbitrary nonzero , the sign criterion is ; is a flat band.
For electron charge with in a constant electric field , the single-band semiclassical equations are , . Thus , and for ,These are Bloch oscillations of period . The zero-field limit is . This assumes a narrow packet and neglects scattering and interband transitions.
For many electrons obeying the Pauli exclusion principle, a partially filled band has available nearby states and can carry current under a displaced occupation distribution: it describes a metal within band theory. A completely filled band has cancelling velocities over the zone, so its current is zero; if separated from empty higher bands by a nonzero gap, it describes an insulator at sufficiently low temperature and weak electric field. With spin degeneracy this isolated band is filled at two electrons per site. The single-electron Hamiltonian alone does not specify the filling or a gap to a next band, so those extra physical assumptions are required for classifying a material.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2021 iii Paper 321 2 b Solution 2026-09-28
With self-gravity restored,The product changes sign atFor , crests and a localized wave packet travel in the same radial direction. For , the group velocity and phase velocity have opposite signs: the envelope and its wave energy propagate opposite to the individual crests. At the group velocity vanishes and neighboring wave components cause the packet to spread.
Consider first a scalar constant-coefficient Cauchy problem for a partial differential equation on the whole line. A translation-invariant spatial discretization is a convolution operator, so the discrete Fourier transform turns it into multiplication by its Fourier symbol. This reduction is exact because Fourier modes are the simultaneous generalized eigenfunctions of every translation-invariant stencil.
For a fully discrete one-step methodwrite for its amplification factor. The Parseval identity givesConsequently the exact necessary and sufficient condition for stability on every bounded time interval iswith independent of the mesh. Sufficiency follows directly from Parseval; necessity follows by choosing transformed initial data concentrated where the multiplier is largest. For a contractive scheme one can take , yielding the familiar Von Neumann stability analysis condition .
For a semidiscretization with scalar symbol , the corresponding exact criterion isIndeed, the Fourier multiplier of the solution operator is . For systems, eigenvalues alone cease to be sufficient when the matrix symbol is non-normal; the necessary and sufficient statement is the uniform bound .
On the whole lattice, a finite stencil defines a Laurent operator, whose operator norm is the essential supremum of its symbol. Restricting the same stencil to a half-line gives a Toeplitz operator. The Cauchy symbol condition remains necessary for a stable initial-boundary scheme because data localized far from the boundary behave like the whole-line problem for a finite time. It is not sufficient: the boundary closure can support growing modes or amplify incoming modes even when every interior Fourier mode is stable.
Boundary stability therefore requires a uniform estimate for the forced half-line recurrence. After a Laplace transform in time and a Fourier transform in tangential variables, one solves a normal-direction recurrence. The Uniform Kreiss--Lopatinskii condition requires the boundary equations to determine its decaying roots with a uniformly bounded inverse. In practical terms, one imposes one independent boundary condition for each incoming characteristic or numerical mode and none for outgoing modes. The group velocity identifies the direction in which a narrow wave packet carries energy, so its sign helps determine which boundary is inflow and explains why a numerically generated high-frequency branch can require a boundary condition different from that suggested by its phase velocity.
For a two-step method, the Fourier substitution produces an amplification polynomial of a multilevel finite difference scheme. Every root must lie in the closed unit disk, and unit-modulus roots must be simple, uniformly in the wavenumber. For example, leapfrog differencing of givesand henceThe roots have unit modulus when , giving the usual Courant restriction . At the endpoint, a wavenumber with produces a repeated unit root and violates the uniform root condition; strict avoids this marginal linear growth. The second root is the familiar oscillatory computational mode, illustrating why a multilevel scheme requires its full amplification polynomial rather than a single multiplier.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2023 ii Paper 3 39C a iii Solution Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-09-25
A wave crest moves at the phase velocity, while the envelope of a narrow wave packet moves at the group velocity. Since for every nonzero wavenumber, the crests move more slowly than the packet.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2024 iii Paper 325 4 Solution 2026-09-28
For particle positions , the two-particle Schrodinger equation isWrite for the localized wave packet and . Neglecting packet spreading and branch overlap, the initial product state evolves branchwise asup to phases generated independently on the two particles. These branch-dependent phases generally cannot be separated into one phase depending only on and one depending only on , so the Newtonian gravitational potential energy creates gravitationally induced entanglement.
If is much smaller than the other separations, remove their nearly common phase and retain onlyThe state is approximatelyIts concurrence is , so it becomes maximally entangled first at . For ,Thus the near-maximal entanglement time is about within the stated approximation.
A single prescribed classical gravitational potential gives a Hamiltonian of the form . Its evolution factorizes as and preserves every initial product state, so it cannot generate this entanglement. A semiclassical mean field sourced only by expectation values likewise gives each particle a local one-body potential and does not provide a quantum mediator carrying branch correlations.
An entanglement witness is a Hermitian operator whose expectation is nonnegative on every separable state but negative on at least one entangled state. At , defineThe largest Schmidt coefficient of is , so every product state in the four-dimensional branch subspace satisfies . By closure under convex combinations, for every separable mixture, whereasA negative measured value therefore certifies entanglement. Under the assumptions that the masses began unentangled and interacted only through gravity, such certification would show that the mediator can transmit quantum coherence; it would be evidence against a purely classical gravitational channel and for the quantum nature of gravity.
Saddle growth rate along a ray 2026-10-06
On a ray , a localized wave packet is governed by a physically selected saddle point satisfying in its analytic dispersion relation. The exponent's real growth is . The fixed-frame case gives the absolute growth rate. This ray formulation makes the frame dependence of convective hydrodynamic instability explicit.
Wave dispersion Created 2026-10-05 Updated 2026-10-07
Wave dispersion means that phase velocity depends on wavenumber or, equivalently, wavelength. Wave packets generally travel with group velocity, which need not equal phase velocity. The linear rotating shallow-water dispersion relation has faster long-wave phase motion but slower long-wave packet motion when .

