Friday, 21 June 2019

Proof involving functional equation



I'm trying to prove that if f(x+n)=f(x)f(n) for all xR and nN, then it also holds for x,nR. One "argument" I came up with was regarding the symmetry. There's no reason why one should be constrained to the integers, while the other can be any real number, but that's not a proper argument.






Another thing I thought of is this: If we set n=1 then we get f(x+1)=f(1)f(x) which is true for all xR, now if we instead set x=1 then we get f(n+1)=f(n)f(1) which must also be true for nR because (1) is. What keeps me from being satisfied is that nR under the assumption that x=1.




Is my reasoning valid or not?



Edit: Forgot an important bit of information: f is a continuous function.


Answer



Your proof is not valid; you are noticing that if x is an integer then n could vary anywhere in the reals, but this is just stating that the relation f(x+n)=f(x)f(n) has a symmetry where we swap x and n and doesn't tell us anything about whether f(x+y)=f(x)f(y) when both are real.



More directly, the statement you're trying to prove is false, so obviously your proof of it is not valid. Let f be the function
f(x)=ax+g(x)
where g(x) is a function such that g(x+1)=g(x) and g(0)=0, and clearly, for any integer n, it holds that g(x+n)=g(x) and g(n)=0. Then, for integer n and real x, it olds that
f(x+n)=ax+n+g(x+n)

but we can write x+n+g(x+n)=(x+g(x))+(n+g(n)) so we have



f(x+n)=ax+g(x)an+g(n)=f(x)f(n).
However, it's easy to choose reals for which f(x+y)=f(x)f(y) does not hold; for instance, choosing x=y=12 and letting k=g(12)+12, we get
f(1)=f(12)f(12)
a=akak=a2k
which does not hold if a1 and g(12)0.


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