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Algebra Difficulty 6.8 National olympiad Prove it

Find all functions f:R0Rf: \mathbb{R}_{\geq 0} \rightarrow \mathbb{R} that satisfy

2x3zf(z)+yf(y)3yz2f(x) 2 x^{3} z f(z)+y f(y) \geq 3 y z^{2} f(x)

for all x,y,zR0x, y, z \in \mathbb{R}_{\geq 0}.

Solution

Answer: all functions of the form fc,d(x)={cx2 if x>0d if x=0f_{c, d}(x)=\left\{\begin{array}{ll}c x^{2} & \text { if } x>0 \\ d & \text { if } x=0\end{array}\right. with c0c \geq 0 and d0d \leq 0.

Substituting x=0x=0 and y=1y=1 yields f(1)3f(0)z2f(1) \geq 3 f(0) z^{2} for all z0z \geq 0. If f(0)>0f(0)>0, then the right side of this inequality is unbounded, a contradiction. Therefore, f(0)0f(0) \leq 0.

Substituting z=0z=0 yields yf(y)0y f(y) \geq 0, so f(y)0f(y) \geq 0 for all y>0y>0. In particular, f(1)0f(1) \geq 0.
Substituting x=yx=y and z=1z=1 yields

2y3f(1)+yf(y)3yf(y) 2 y^{3} f(1)+y f(y) \geq 3 y f(y)

so 2y3f(1)2yf(y)2 y^{3} f(1) \geq 2 y f(y), so f(y)y2f(1)f(y) \leq y^{2} f(1) for y>0y>0.
Substituting z=yz=y and x=1x=1 yields

2yf(y)+yf(y)3y3f(1) 2 y f(y)+y f(y) \geq 3 y^{3} f(1)

so 3yf(y)3y3f(1)3 y f(y) \geq 3 y^{3} f(1), so f(y)y2f(1)f(y) \geq y^{2} f(1) for y>0y>0.
Together, this gives f(y)=y2f(1)f(y)=y^{2} f(1) for y>0y>0.
Write c=f(1)c=f(1) and d=f(0)d=f(0). Then we now know that f(x)={cx2 if x>0d if x=0f(x)=\left\{\begin{array}{ll}c x^{2} & \text { if } x>0 \\ d & \text { if } x=0\end{array}\right. with c0c \geq 0 and d0d \leq 0. We will now check these functions.

First note that xf(x)0x f(x) \geq 0 for all xR0x \in \mathbb{R}_{\geq 0}: for x=0x=0 this is trivial and for x>0x>0 we have xf(x)=cx30x f(x)=c x^{3} \geq 0 since c0c \geq 0.

For x=0x=0 we have yf(y)3yz2f(0)y f(y) \geq 3 y z^{2} f(0), and this is true since yf(y)0y f(y) \geq 0 and 3yz2f(0)=3 y z^{2} f(0)= 3yz2d03 y z^{2} d \leq 0 for y,z0y, z \geq 0.
For y=0y=0 we have 2x3zf(z)02 x^{3} z f(z) \geq 0 and this is true. For z=0z=0 we have yf(y)0y f(y) \geq 0 and this is true.
Now assume that x,y,z>0x, y, z>0. Then we have f(x)=cx2,f(y)=cy2,f(z)=cz2f(x)=c x^{2}, f(y)=c y^{2}, f(z)=c z^{2} and we need to prove that

2x3zcz2+ycy23yz2cx2 2 x^{3} z c z^{2}+y c y^{2} \geq 3 y z^{2} c x^{2}

Since c0c \geq 0 it is sufficient to show that 2x3z3+y33yz2x22 x^{3} z^{3}+y^{3} \geq 3 y z^{2} x^{2} for all x,y,z>0x, y, z>0. This follows from the arithmetic mean-geometric mean inequality on the three terms x3z3,x3z3x^{3} z^{3}, x^{3} z^{3} and y3y^{3}. So all these functions satisfy the condition.

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Source: NuminaMath-1.5, licensed Apache-2.0. Statement and solution reproduced as published; topic and difficulty added by this site.