Paper 2, Section I, D

Variational Principles
Part IB, 2020

Find the stationary points of the function ϕ=xyz\phi=x y z subject to the constraint x+a2y2+z2=b2x+a^{2} y^{2}+z^{2}=b^{2}, with a,b>0a, b>0. What are the maximum and minimum values attained by ϕ\phi, subject to this constraint, if we further restrict to x0x \geqslant 0 ?