Friday, December 22, 2017

real analysis - If fcolonmathbbRtomathbbR is such that f(x+y)=f(x)f(y) and continuous at 0, then continuous everywhere




Prove that if f:RR is such that f(x+y)=f(x)f(y) for all x,y, and f is continuous at 0, then it is continuous everywhere.





If there exists cR such that f(c)=0, then
f(x+c)=f(x)f(c)=0.
As every real number y can be written as y=x+c for some real x, this function is either everywhere zero or nowhere zero. The latter case is the interesting one. So let's consider the case that f is not the constant function f=0.



To prove continuity in this case, note that for any xR
f(x)=f(x+0)=f(x)f(0)f(0)=1.



Continuity at 0 tells us that given any ε0>0, we can find δ0>0 such that |x|<δ0 implies
|f(x)1|<ε0.




Okay, so let cR be fixed arbitrarily (recall that f(c) is nonzero). Let ε>0. By continuity of f at 0, we can choose δ>0 such that
|xc|<δ|f(xc)1|<ε|f(c)|.



Now notice that for all x such that |xc|<δ, we have
|f(x)f(c)|=|f(xc+c)f(c)|=|f(xc)f(c)f(c)|=|f(c)||f(xc)1|<|f(c)|ε|f(c)|=ε.
Hence f is continuous at c. Since c was arbitrary, f is continuous on all of R.



Is my procedure correct?


Answer



One easier thing to do is to notice that f(x)=(f(x/2))2 so f is positive, and assume that it is never zero, since then the function is identically zero. Then you can define g(x)=lnf(x) and this function g will satisfy the Cauchy functional equation
g(x+y)=g(x)+g(y)
and the theory for this functional equation is well known, and it is easy to see that g is continuous if and only if it is continuous at 0.


No comments:

Post a Comment

analysis - Injection, making bijection

I have injection f:AB and I want to get bijection. Can I just resting codomain to f(A)? I know that every function i...