Find all binary operations : (meaning takes pairs of positive real numbers to positive real numbers) such that for any real numbers ,
* the equation holds; and
* if then .
Solution
First solution using Cauchy FE We prove:
Claim — We have where is some involutive and totally multiplicative function. (In fact, this classifies all functions satisfying the first condition completely.)
Proof. Let denote the assertion .
* Note that for any , the function is injective, because if then take to get .
* Take and injectivity to get .
* Take to get .
* Take to get
Henceforth let us define , so , is involutive and
Plugging this into the original condition now gives , which (since is an involution) gives completely multiplicative.
In particular, . We are now interested only in the second condition, which reads for .
Define the function
so that is additive, and also for all . We appeal to the following theorem:
Lemma
If is an additive function which is not linear, then it is dense in the plane: for any point and there exists such that and .
Applying this lemma with the fact that implies readily that is linear. In other words, is of the form for some fixed real number . It is easy to check which finishes.
Second solution manually As before we arrive at , with an involutive and totally multiplicative function.
We prove that:
Claim — For any , we have .
Proof. WLOG , and suppose hence .
Assume that ; we show . Note that for integers and with , we must have
and thus we have arrived at the proposition
for all integers and . Due to the density of in the real numbers, this can only happen if or .
Claim — The function is continuous.
Proof. Indeed, it's equivalent to show is continuous, and we have that
since . Therefore is Lipschitz. Hence continuous, and is too.
Finally, we have from multiplicative that
for every rational number , say. As is continuous this implies or identically (depending on whether or , respectively).
Therefore, or , as needed.