Part IA, {{ year }}
Part IA 2020
Paper 1, Section I, E
Part IA, 2020 comment(a) Let be continuous in , and let be strictly monotonic in , with a continuous derivative there, and suppose that and . Prove that
[Any version of the fundamental theorem of calculus may be used providing it is quoted correctly.]
(b) Justifying carefully the steps in your argument, show that the improper Riemann integral
converges for , and evaluate it.
Paper 1, Section II, D
Part IA, 2020 comment(a) State Rolle's theorem. Show that if is times differentiable and then
for some . Hence, or otherwise, show that if for all then is constant.
(b) Let and be differentiable functions such that
Prove that (i) is independent of , (ii) , (iii) .
Show that and . Deduce there exists such that and .
Paper 2, Section II, E
Part IA, 2020 commentSuppose that is a Möbius transformation acting on the extended complex plane. Show that a Möbius transformation with at least three fixed points is the identity. Deduce that every Möbius transformation except the identity has one or two fixed points.
Which of the following statements are true and which are false? Justify your answers, quoting standard facts if required.
(i) If has exactly one fixed point then it is conjugate to .
(ii) Every Möbius transformation that fixes may be expressed as a composition of maps of the form and (where and are complex numbers).
(iii) Every Möbius transformation that fixes 0 may be expressed as a composition of maps of the form and (where is a complex number).
(iv) The operation of complex conjugation defined by is a Möbius transformation.
Paper 2, Section II, E
Part IA, 2020 comment(a) Let be a finite group acting on a finite set . For any subset of , we define the fixed point set as . Write for . Let be the set of -orbits in . In what follows you may assume the orbit-stabiliser theorem.
Prove that
where the sum is taken over a set of representatives for the orbits containing more than one element.
By considering the set , or otherwise, show also that
(b) Let be the set of vertices of a regular pentagon and let the dihedral group act on . Consider the set of functions (the integers mod . Assume that and its rotation subgroup act on by the rule
where and . It is given that . We define a necklace to be a -orbit in and a bracelet to be a -orbit in .
Find the number of necklaces and bracelets for any .
Paper 2, Section I,
Part IA, 2020 commentDefine an equivalence relation. Which of the following is an equivalence relation on the set of non-zero complex numbers? Justify your answers. (i) if . (ii) if . (iii) if is rational for some integer . (iv) if .
Paper 2, Section II, D
Part IA, 2020 comment(a) Define the Euler function . State the Chinese remainder theorem, and use it to derive a formula for when is a product of distinct primes. Show that there are at least ten odd numbers with a power of 2 .
(b) State and prove the Fermat-Euler theorem.
(c) In the RSA cryptosystem a message is encrypted as . Explain how and should be chosen, and how (given a factorisation of ) to compute the decryption exponent . Prove that your choice of works, subject to reasonable assumptions on . If and then what is ?
Paper 2, Section II, D
Part IA, 2020 comment(a) Define what it means for a set to be countable. Prove that is countable, and that the power set of is uncountable.
(b) Let be a bijection. Show that if and are related by then they have the same number of fixed points.
[A fixed point of is an element such that .]
(c) Let be the set of bijections with the property that no iterate of has a fixed point.
[The iterate of is the map obtained by successive applications of .]
(i) Write down an explicit element of .
(ii) Determine whether is countable or uncountable.
Paper 1, Section I, F
Part IA, 2020 commentA robot factory begins with a single generation-0 robot. Each generation- robot independently builds some number of generation- robots before breaking down. The number of generation- robots built by a generation- robot is or 3 with probabilities and respectively. Find the expectation of the total number of generation- robots produced by the factory. What is the probability that the factory continues producing robots forever?
[Standard results about branching processes may be used without proof as long as they are carefully stated.]
Paper 1, Section II, F
Part IA, 2020 commentLet be events in some probability space. State and prove the inclusion-exclusion formula for the probability . Show also that
Suppose now that and that whenever we have . Show that there is a constant independent of such that .
Paper 1, Section II, F
Part IA, 2020 comment(a) Let be a random variable. Write down the probability density function (pdf) of , and verify that it is indeed a pdf. Find the moment generating function (mgf) of and hence, or otherwise, verify that has mean 0 and variance 1 .
(b) Let be a sequence of IID random variables. Let and let . Find the distribution of .
(c) Let . Find the mean and variance of . Let and let .
If is a sequence of random variables and is a random variable, what does it mean to say that in distribution? State carefully the continuity theorem and use it to show that in distribution.
[You may not assume the central limit theorem.]
Paper 2, Section I, B
Part IA, 2020 comment(a) Evaluate the line integral
along
(i) a straight line from to ,
(ii) the parabola .
(b) State Green's theorem. The curve is the circle of radius centred on the origin and traversed anticlockwise and is another circle of radius traversed clockwise and completely contained within but may or may not be centred on the origin. Find
as a function of .
Paper 2, Section II, B
Part IA, 2020 commentWrite down Stokes' theorem for a vector field on .
Let the surface be the part of the inverted paraboloid
and the vector field .
(a) Sketch the surface and directly calculate .
(b) Now calculate a different way by using Stokes' theorem.
Paper 1, Section II, F
Part IA, 2020 comment(a) Let be a bounded sequence of real numbers. Show that has a convergent subsequence.
(b) Let be a bounded sequence of complex numbers. For each , write . Show that has a subsequence such that converges. Hence, or otherwise, show that has a convergent subsequence.
(c) Write for the set of positive integers. Let be a positive real number, and for each , let be a sequence of real numbers with for all . By induction on or otherwise, show that there exist sequences of positive integers with the following properties:
for all , the sequence is strictly increasing;
for all is a subsequence of and
for all and all with , the sequence
converges.
Hence, or otherwise, show that there exists a strictly increasing sequence of positive integers such that for all the sequence converges.
Paper 2, Section II, B
Part IA, 2020 comment(a) State the value of and find where .
(b) A vector field is given by
where is a constant vector. Calculate the second-rank tensor using suffix notation and show how splits naturally into symmetric and antisymmetric parts. Show that
and
(c) Consider the equation
on a bounded domain subject to the mixed boundary condition
on the smooth boundary , where is a constant. Show that if a solution exists, it will be unique.
Find the spherically symmetric solution for the choice in the region for , as a function of the constant . Explain why a solution does not exist for
Paper 1, Section I, C
Part IA, 2020 commentGiven a non-zero complex number , where and are real, find expressions for the real and imaginary parts of the following functions of in terms of and :
(i) ,
(ii)
(iii) ,
(iv) ,
where is the complex conjugate of .
Now assume and find expressions for the real and imaginary parts of all solutions to
(v) .
Paper 1, Section II, C
Part IA, 2020 comment(a) Let , and be three distinct points in the plane which are not collinear, and let , and be their position vectors.
Show that the set of points in equidistant from and is given by an equation of the form
where is a unit vector and is a scalar, to be determined. Show that is perpendicular to .
Show that if satisfies
then
How do you interpret this result geometrically?
(b) Let and be constant vectors in . Explain why the vectors satisfying
describe a line in . Find an expression for the shortest distance between two lines , where .
Paper 1, Section II,
Part IA, 2020 commentWhat does it mean to say an matrix is Hermitian?
What does it mean to say an matrix is unitary?
Show that the eigenvalues of a Hermitian matrix are real and that eigenvectors corresponding to distinct eigenvalues are orthogonal.
Suppose that is an Hermitian matrix with distinct eigenvalues and corresponding normalised eigenvectors . Let denote the matrix whose columns are . Show directly that is unitary and , where is a diagonal matrix you should specify.
If is unitary and diagonal, must it be the case that is Hermitian? Give a proof or counterexample.
Find a unitary matrix and a diagonal matrix such that
Paper 1, Section I, A
Part IA, 2020 commentSolve the differential equation
subject to the initial condition .
Paper 1, Section II, A
Part IA, 2020 commentShow that for each and the function
satisfies the heat equation
For and define the function by the integral
Show that satisfies the heat equation and . [Hint: You may find it helpful to consider the substitution .]
Burgers' equation is
By considering the transformation
solve Burgers' equation with the initial condition .
Paper 1, Section II, A
Part IA, 2020 commentSolve the system of differential equations for ,
subject to the initial conditions .
Paper 2, Section I, C
Part IA, 2020 commentA particle with unit mass moves in a central potential where . Initially is a distance away from the origin moving with speed on a trajectory which, in the absence of any force, would be a straight line whose shortest distance from the origin is . The shortest distance between 's actual trajectory and the origin is , with , at which point it is moving with speed .
(i) Assuming , find in terms of and .
(ii) Assuming , find an expression for 's farthest distance from the origin in the form
where , and depend only on , and the angular momentum .
[You do not need to prove that energy and angular momentum are conserved.]
Paper 2, Section II, C
Part IA, 2020 commentAn axially symmetric pulley of mass rotates about a fixed, horizontal axis, say the -axis. A string of fixed length and negligible mass connects two blocks with masses and . The string is hung over the pulley, with one mass on each side. The tensions in the string due to masses and can respectively be labelled and . The moment of inertia of the pulley is , where is a number and is the radius of the
The motion of the pulley is opposed by a frictional torque of magnitude , where is the angular velocity of the pulley and is a real positive constant. Obtain a first-order differential equation for and, from it, find given that the system is released from rest.
The surface of the pulley is defined by revolving the function about the -axis, with
Find a value for the constant given that the pulley has uniform mass density .
Paper 2, Section II, C
Part IA, 2020 comment(a) A moving particle with rest mass decays into two particles (photons) with zero rest mass. Derive an expression for , where is the angle between the spatial momenta of the final state particles, and show that it depends only on and the energies of the massless particles. ( is the speed of light in vacuum.)
(b) A particle with rest mass decays into two particles: a particle with rest mass and another particle with zero rest mass. Using dimensional analysis explain why the speed of in the rest frame of can be expressed as
and a dimensionless function of . Determine the function .
Choose coordinates in the rest frame of such that is emitted at from the origin in the -direction. The particle decays after a time , measured in its own rest frame. Determine the spacetime coordinates , in the rest frame of , corresponding to this event.
Paper 2, Section I, E
Part IA, 2020 commentWhat does it mean for an element of the symmetric group to be a transposition or a cycle?
Let . How many permutations of are there such that
(i)
(ii) is even for each even number ?
(iii) is a 4-cycle?
(iv) can be written as the product of two transpositions?
You should indicate in each case how you have derived your formula.