Sunday, March 18, 2018

real analysis - Intermediate Value Property + BV nearly everywhere = continuous?



It is well known that a function f:[a,b]R which has the intermediate value property (i.e. if a,b[a,b], then for each c between f(a) and f(b) there is some x between a and b such that f(x)=c) cannot have jump discontinuities, and that a function g:[a,b]R of bounded variation can only have jump discontinuities. Therefore, a function having the intermediate value property and being of bounded variation must be continuous. I wonder if the BV-condition can be relaxed a little, so my question is:



Is there a discontinuous function f:[a,b]R and a function g:[a,b]R of bounded variation, such that f has the intermediate value property and agrees with g at every point of [a,b] except at countably many?



Any hints/help is highly appreciated. Thanks in advance!


Answer



Let x[a,b] be a discontinuity of f.

We assume without loss of generality that x(a,b), the case of the boundary can be dealt with similarly.



Since g is of bounded variation, the limits l=lim and L=\lim_{y\to x^+}g(y) exist and are finite.
On the other hand, since f is Darboux and discontinuous at x, at least one of \lim_{y\to x^-}f(y) and \lim_{y\to x^+}f(y) must not exist, say the latter.



We hence have that



\begin{align}\forall \epsilon>0,\,&\exists\delta>0,\,\forall y \in(x,x+\delta),\,\,|g(y)-L|<\epsilon\tag{1}\\ \exists \epsilon_0>0,\,&\forall\delta>0,\,\exists y \in(x,x+\delta),\,\,|f(y)-L|\geq\epsilon_0\tag{2}\end{align}




Take \epsilon=\frac{\epsilon_0}{2} in (1), so that there is some \delta_0>0 with the property that |g(y)-L|<\frac{\epsilon_0}{2} whenever y \in (x,x+\delta_0).
By (2), there is some y_1\in (x,x+\delta_0) with |f(y_1)-L|\geq \epsilon_0.



If g=f except on a countable subset of (x,x+\epsilon), there must be some y_2\in(x,y_1) with g(y_2)=f(y_2).
Hence, |g(y_2)-L|=|f(y_2)-L|<\frac{\epsilon_0}{2}.



Now, since f is Darboux, it must assume all values between f(y_1) and f(y_2) on (y_1,y_2).
In particular, it must assume an uncountable range of values v with \frac{\epsilon_0}{2}\leq |v-L|\leq \epsilon_0.
This means there is some y_3\in(y_2,y_1)\subset(x,x+\delta_0) with \frac{\epsilon_0}{2}\leq |g(y_3)-L|\leq \epsilon_0, which contradicts the defining property of \epsilon_0. \square


No comments:

Post a Comment

analysis - Injection, making bijection

I have injection f \colon A \rightarrow B and I want to get bijection. Can I just resting codomain to f(A)? I know that every function i...