Let be the set of all positive real numbers. Find all functions and polynomials with non-negative coefficients and that satisfy the equality:
for all positive real numbers .
Solutions — 2
Solution 1
Assume that and the polynomial with non-negative coefficients and satisfy the conditions of the problem. For positive reals with , we shall write for the relation:
1. Step 1. . Assume that this is not true. Since , is injective on positive reals. If for some positive real , then setting such that (where obviously ), we shall get and by , , we get , a contradiction.
2. Step 2. for some non-negative real . We will show and together with the result will follow. Assume the contrary. Hence there exists a positive such that for all . By Step 1 we get
and therefore . We get for all positive integers , which is a contradiction.
3. Step 3. If , then . Indeed by , we get
On the other hand by , we have:
Substituting in the LHS of , we get .
4. Step 4. There is , such that is linear on . If , then by Step 3, fixing , we get which implies that is linear for . As for the case , consider . Pick , then by and we get:
which proves that and therefore is linear on .
5. Step 5. and on . By Step 4, let on . Since takes only positive values, . If , then by for we get:
Since the LHS is not constant, we conclude , but then for , we get that the RHS equals which is a contradiction.
Hence . Now for and large enough by we get:
Comparing the coefficients before , we see and since , . Now and thus . Finally, equalising the coefficients before , we conclude and therefore .
Now we know that on and . Let . Then by we conclude:
Therefore for every . Conversely, it is straightforward that and do indeed satisfy the conditions of the problem. □
Solution 2
Assume that the function and the polynomial with non-negative coefficients satisfy the given equation. Fix and note that:
Assume that . Then for . Let and . Pick . Then:
Therefore for any and . Setting , we see that for all positive . Therefore if we have that . This shows that:
On the other hand . Therefore the equality is not universally satisfied.
From now on, we assume that . Therefore is strictly increasing with , , i.e. is bijective on and .
Let and set . From above, we have and . Therefore:
On the other hand . Therefore we obtain that:
Since is bijective from to for any there is such that . Applying this observation to and setting , we obtain that:
Thus if we denote , then and the above equality can be rewritten as:
Let and note that since is continuous and monotone increasing, is continuous and monotone increasing, then so are and consequently and . It is also clear, that and . Therefore is continuously bijective from to with .
Thus we have:
and using that is invertible, we obtain:
Setting , we get:
Since this equality is valid for any we actually have that:
Let . Then:
On the other hand:
Therefore:
Noting that is continuous on , since it is sum of continuous functions, and letting tend to 0, we obtain that:
Therefore and substituting in the definition of we obtain:
Consequently:
Thus:
Finally note that and since and are monotone and bijective on , exhausts when ranges on . It follows that for . It follows that for :
In particular, since , . Now for and we have:
Since this is valid for any , we conclude and . Now it follows that for .
It is also straightforward to check that and satisfy the equality: