Let be the set of positive real numbers. Determine all functions such that
for every .
Solutions — 2
Solution 1
All functions for some .
Let be a function that satisfies the inequality of the problem statement. We will write for the composition of with itself times, with the convention that . Substituting gives
Substituting instead leads to , or equivalently
We can generalize this inequality. If we replace by in the above inequality, we get
for every and for every integer . In particular, for every . Hereafter consider even integers . Observe that
Since takes positive values, it holds that for every . So, we have proved that for every and every . Since , this holds if and only if
for every . The original inequality becomes
for every . Hence, is a constant. We conclude that for some .
Solution 2
Let be a function that satisfies the inequality of the problem statement. As in Solution 1, we prove that
for every and every . Since takes positive values, this implies that
In other words, for every and every .
We replace by in the original inequality and get
Using that , we obtain
for every . The same trick as in Solution 1 gives
for every and every . Possibly permuting and , we may assume that then the above inequality implies . We conclude as in Solution 1.