Processing math: 100%

Pages

Bookmark and Share

Wednesday, April 6, 2011

Function Composition

Are there real-valued continuous functions f,g defined on real numbers such that
f(g(x)) = x^{2011}
and
g(f(x)) = 2011x

for all x?

Solution

Applying g to both sides, we have:
g(f(g(x))) = g(x^{2011})
2011g(x) = g(x^{2011})

Let x = 1, we have g(1) = 0

Let P(y) = g(e^y) defined on all y real numbers.
So P(2011y) = g(e^{2011y}) = g((e^y)^{2011}) = 2011g(e^y) = 2011P(y)
We conjecture that P(y) = ay for some a. Setting x = e^y, we have:
g(x) = g(e^y) = P(y) = ay = a \log x

Now plugging back in, our second equation becomes:
a \log f(x) = 2011 x
f(x) = e^{2011x / a}

Testing for compatibility with first equation:

f(g(x)) = e^{2011 a \log x / a} = e^{2011 \log x} = x^{2011}

No comments:

Post a Comment