Part II, 2008, Paper 1
Part II, 2008, Paper 1
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1.II.21F
comment(i) State the van Kampen theorem.
(ii) Calculate the fundamental group of the wedge .
(iii) Let where is a circle. Calculate the fundamental group of .
1.II.33E
commentA beam of particles each of mass and energy scatters off an axisymmetric potential . In the first Born approximation the scattering amplitude is
where is the wave vector of the incident particles and is the wave vector of the outgoing particles at scattering angle (and ). Let and . Show that when the scattering potential is spherically symmetric the expression simplifies to
and find the relation between and .
Calculate this scattering amplitude for the potential where is a constant, and show that at high energies the particles emerge predominantly in a narrow cone around the forward beam direction. Estimate the angular width of the cone.
1.II.26I
commentLet be an irreducible continuous-time Markov chain with initial probability distribution and Q-matrix (for short: a CTMC), on a finite state space .
(i) Define the terms reversible CTMC and detailed balance equations (DBEs) and explain, without proof, the relation between them.
(ii) Prove that any solution of the DBEs is an equilibrium distribution (ED) for .
Let be an irreducible discrete-time Markov chain with initial probability distribution and transition probability matrix (for short: a DTMC), on the state space .
(iii) Repeat the two definitions from (i) in the context of the DTMC . State also in this context the relation between them, and prove a statement analogous to (ii).
(iv) What does it mean to say that is the jump chain for ? State and prove a relation between the ED for the and the ED for its jump chain .
(v) Prove that is reversible (in equilibrium) if and only if its jump chain is reversible (in equilibrium).
(vi) Consider now a continuous time random walk on a graph. More precisely, consider a CTMC on an undirected graph, where some pairs of states are joined by one or more non-oriented 'links' . Here is the number of links between and . Assume that the jump rate is proportional to . Can the chain be reversible? Identify the corresponding jump chain (which determines a discrete-time random walk on the graph) and comment on its reversibility.
1.II
commentObtain an expression for the th term of an asymptotic expansion, valid as , for the integral
Estimate the value of for the term of least magnitude.
Obtain the first two terms of an asymptotic expansion, valid as , for the integral
[Hint:
[Stirling's formula may be quoted.]
1.I.9A
commentThe action for a system with generalized coordinates for a time interval is given by
where is the Lagrangian. The end point values and are fixed.
Derive Lagrange's equations from the principle of least action by considering the variation of for all possible paths.
Define the momentum conjugate to . Derive a condition for to be a constant of the motion.
A symmetric top moves under the action of a potential . The Lagrangian is given by
where the generalized coordinates are the Euler angles and the principal moments of inertia are and .
Show that is a constant of the motion and give expressions for two others. Show further that it is possible for the top to move with both and constant provided these satisfy the condition
1.I.4G
commentDefine the entropy of a random variable that takes no more than different values. What are the maximum and the minimum values for the entropy for a fixed value of ? Explain when the maximum and minimum are attained. You should prove any inequalities that you use.
1.II.12G
commentState Shannon's Noisy Coding Theorem for a binary symmetric channel.
Define the mutual information of two discrete random variables and . Prove that the mutual information is symmetric and non-negative. Define also the information capacity of a channel.
A channel transmits numbers chosen from the alphabet and has transition matrix
for a number with . Calculate the information capacity of the channel.
1.I.10E
commentThe number density of particles of mass at equilibrium in the early universe is given by the integral
where is the chemical potential, and is the spin degeneracy. Assuming that the particles remain in equilibrium when they become non-relativistic , show that the number density can be expressed as
[Hint: Recall that
At around seconds, deuterium forms through the nuclear fusion of nonrelativistic protons and neutrons via the interaction . In equilibrium, what is the relationship between the chemical potentials of the three species? Show that the ratio of their number densities can be expressed as
where the deuterium binding energy is and you may take . Now consider the fractional densities , where is the baryon density of the universe, to re-express the ratio above in the form , which incorporates the baryon-to-photon ratio of the universe.
[You may assume that the photon density is .]
Why does deuterium form only at temperatures much lower than that given by ?
1.II.15E
comment(i) A homogeneous and isotropic universe has mass density and scale factor . Show how the conservation of total energy (kinetic plus gravitational potential) when applied to a test particle on the edge of a spherical region in this universe can be used to obtain the Friedmann equation
where is a constant. State clearly any assumptions you have made.
(ii) Assume that the universe is flat and filled with two major components: pressure-free matter and dark energy with equation of state where their mass densities today are given respectively by and . Assuming that each component independently satisfies the fluid conservation equation, , show that the total mass density can be expressed as
where we have set .
Hence, solve the Friedmann equation and show that the scale factor can be expressed in the form
where and are constants which you should specify in terms of and .
[Hint: try the substitution .]
Show that the scale factor has the expected behaviour for a matter-dominated universe at early times and that the universe accelerates at late times .
1.II.24H
commentLet be an integer, and let denote the set of real-valued matrices. We make into an -dimensional smooth manifold via the obvious identification .
(a) Let denote the subset
Show that is a submanifold of . What is ?
(b) Now let denote the subset
Show that for ,
Show that is a submanifold of . What is the dimension of
(c) Now consider the set . For what values of is a submanifold of ?
1.I.7A
commentSketch the phase plane of the system
(i) for and (ii) for . Include in your sketches any trajectories that are the separatrices of a saddle point. In case (ii) shade the domain of stability of the origin.
1.II
commentFrame is moving with uniform speed in the -direction relative to a laboratory frame . The components of the electric and magnetic fields and in the two frames are related by the Lorentz transformation
where and units are chosen so that . How do the components of the spatial vector (where ) transform?
Show that is obtained from by a rotation through about a spatial axis , where and should be determined. Hence, or otherwise, show that there are precisely two independent scalars associated with which are preserved by the Lorentz transformation, and obtain them.
[Hint: since there exists a unique real such that .]
1.II.36A
commentDerive the relation between the stress tensor and the rate-of-strain tensor in an incompressible Newtonian fluid, using the result that there is a linear dependence between the components of and those of that is the same in all frames. Write down the boundary conditions that hold at an interface between two viscous fluids.
Viscous fluid is contained in a channel between the rigid planes and . The fluid in has dynamic viscosity , while that in has dynamic viscosity . Gravity may be neglected. The fluids move through the channel in the -direction under the influence of a pressure gradient applied at the ends of the channel. It may be assumed that the velocity has no -components, and all quantities are independent of .
Find a steady solution of the Navier-Stokes equation in which the interface between the two fluids remains at , the fluid velocity is everywhere independent of , and the pressure gradient is uniform. Use it to calculate the following:
(a) the viscous tangential stress at and at ; and
(b) the ratio of the volume fluxes of the two different fluids.
Comment on the limits of each of the results in (a) and (b) as , and as
1.I.8C
commentThe function is defined by
For which values of does the integral converge?
Show that, for these values,
1.II.14C
commentShow that under the change of variable the equation
becomes
Show that this is a Papperitz equation and that the corresponding -function is
Deduce that .
1.II.18H
commentFind the Galois group of the polynomial over (i) the finite field , (ii) the finite field , (iii) the finite field , (iv) the field of rational numbers.
[Results from the course which you use should be stated precisely.]
1.II.35E
commentFor the metric
obtain the geodesic equations of motion. For a massive particle show that
for some constant . Show that the particle moves on trajectories
where is the proper time, if the origins of are chosen appropriately.
1.I.3G
commentProve that an isometry of Euclidean space is an affine transformation.
Deduce that a finite group of isometries of has a common fixed point.
1.II.11G
commentWhat is meant by an inversion in a circle in ? Show that a composition of two inversions is a Möbius transformation.
Hence, or otherwise, show that if and are two disjoint circles in , then the composition of the inversions in and has two fixed points.
1.II .17F
commentState a result of Euler concerning the number of vertices, edges and faces of a connected plane graph. Deduce that if is a planar graph then . Show that if is a planar graph then .
Are the following statements true or false? Justify your answers.
[You may quote standard facts about planar and non-planar graphs, provided that they are clearly stated.]
(i) If is a graph with then is planar.
(ii) If is a connected graph with average degree at most then is planar.
(iii) If is a connected graph with average degree at most 2 then is planar.
1.II.31C
commentDefine an integrable system in the context of Hamiltonian mechanics with a finite number of degrees of freedom and state the Arnold-Liouville theorem.
Consider a six-dimensional phase space with its canonical coordinates , , and the Hamiltonian
where and where is an arbitrary function. Show that both and are first integrals.
State the Jacobi identity and deduce that the Poisson bracket
is also a first integral. Construct a suitable expression out of to demonstrate that the system admits three first integrals in involution and thus satisfies the hypothesis of the Arnold-Liouville theorem.
1.II.22F
commentSuppose and are real numbers with and . Show, quoting any results on convexity that you need, that
for all real positive and .
Define the space and show that it is a complete normed vector space.
1.II.16G
commentWhat is a well-ordered set? Show that given any two well-ordered sets there is a unique order isomorphism between one and an initial segment of the other.
Show that for any ordinal and for any non-zero ordinal there are unique ordinals and with and .
Show that a non-zero ordinal is a limit ordinal if and only if for some non-zero ordinal .
[You may assume standard properties of ordinal addition, multiplication and subtraction.]
1.I.6B
commentA gene product with concentration is produced by a chemical of concentration , is autocatalysed and degrades linearly according to the kinetic equation
where is a constant.
First consider the case . Show that if there are two positive steady states, and determine their stability. Sketch the reaction rate .
Now consider . Show that there is a single steady state if exceeds a critical value. If the system starts in the steady state with and then is increased sufficiently before decreasing back to zero, show that a biochemical switch can be achieved to a state , whose value you should determine.
1.II.20G
comment(a) Define the ideal class group of an algebraic number field . State a result involving the discriminant of that implies that the ideal class group is finite.
(b) Put , where , and let be the ring of integers of . Show that . Factorise the ideals [2] and [3] in into prime ideals. Verify that the equation of ideals
holds. Hence prove that has class number 3 .
1.I.1H
commentDefine the continued fraction of a real number .
Compute the continued fraction of .
1.II.38C
commentThe Poisson equation in the unit square , with zero boundary conditions on , is discretized with the nine-point formula
where , and are grid points.
(a) Prove that, for any ordering of the grid points, the method can be written as with a symmetric positive-definite matrix .
(b) Describe the Jacobi method for solving a linear system of equations, and prove that it converges for the above system.
[You may quote without proof the corollary of the Householder-John theorem regarding convergence of the Jacobi method.]
1.II.29C
comment(i) State the local existence theorem for the first order quasi-linear partial differential equation
which is to be solved for a real-valued function with data specified on a hypersurface . Include a definition of "non-characteristic" in your answer.
(ii) Consider the linear constant-coefficient case (that is, when all the functions are real constants and for some with real and real) and with the hypersurface taken to be the hyperplane . Explain carefully the relevance of the non-characteristic condition in obtaining a solution via the method of characteristics.
(iii) Solve the equation
with initial data prescribed on , for a real-valued function . Describe the domain on which your solution is and comment on this in relation to the theorem stated in (i).
1.II.32D
comment(a) If and are operators which each commute with their commutator , show that . By considering
and differentiating with respect to the parameter , show also that
where .
(b) Consider a one-dimensional quantum system with position and momentum . Write down a formula for the operator corresponding to translation through , calculate , and show that your answer is consistent with the assumption that position eigenstates obey . Given this assumption, express the wavefunction for in terms of the wavefunction for .
Now suppose the one-dimensional system is a harmonic oscillator of mass and frequency . Show that
where are normalised wavefunctions with energies .
[Standard results for constructing normalised energy eigenstates in terms of annihilation and creation operators
may be quoted without proof.]
1.II.27I
commentAn angler starts fishing at time 0. Fish bite in a Poisson Process of rate per hour, so that, if , the number of fish he catches in the first hours has the Poisson distribution , while , the time in hours until his th bite, has the Gamma distribution , with density function
Bystander plans to watch for 3 hours, and to record the number of fish caught. Bystander plans to observe until the 10 th bite, and to record , the number of hours until this occurs.
For , show that is an unbiased estimator of whose variance function achieves the Cramér-Rao lower bound
Find an unbiased estimator of for , of the form . Does it achieve the Cramér-Rao lower bound? Is it minimum-variance-unbiased? Justify your answers.
In fact, the 10 th fish bites after exactly 3 hours. For each of and , write down the likelihood function for based their observations. What does the Likelihood Principle have to say about the inferences to be drawn by and , and why? Compute the estimates and produced by applying and to the observed data. Does the method of minimum-variance-unbiased estimation respect the Likelihood Principle?
1.II
commentState the Dominated Convergence Theorem.
Hence or otherwise prove Kronecker's Lemma: if is a sequence of non-negative reals such that
then
Let be independent random variables and set . Let be the collection of all finite unions of intervals of the form , where and are rational, together with the whole line . Prove that with probability 1 the limit
exists for all , and identify it. Is it possible to extend defined on to a measure on the Borel -algebra of ? Justify your answer.
1.II.19G
commentFor a complex representation of a finite group , define the action of on the dual representation . If denotes the character of , compute the character of .
[Your formula should express just in terms of the character .]
Using your formula, how can you tell from the character whether a given representation is self-dual, that is, isomorphic to the dual representation?
Let be an irreducible representation of . Show that the trivial representation occurs as a summand of with multiplicity either 0 or 1 . Show that it occurs once if and only if is self-dual.
For a self-dual irreducible representation , show that either has a nondegenerate -invariant symmetric bilinear form or a nondegenerate -invariant alternating bilinear form, but not both.
If is an irreducible self-dual representation of odd dimension , show that the corresponding homomorphism is conjugate to a homomorphism into the orthogonal group . Here means the subgroup of that preserves a nondegenerate symmetric bilinear form on .
1.II.23H
commentDefine the terms Riemann surface, holomorphic map between Riemann surfaces and biholomorphic map.
Show, without using the notion of degree, that a non-constant holomorphic map between compact connected Riemann surfaces must be surjective.
Let be a biholomorphic map of the punctured unit disc onto itself. Show that extends to a biholomorphic map of the open unit disc to itself such that .
Suppose that is a continuous holomorphic map between Riemann surfaces and is holomorphic on , where is a point in . Show that is then holomorphic on all of .
[The Open Mapping Theorem may be used without proof if clearly stated.]
1.I.5J
commentConsider the following Binomial generalized linear model for data , with logit link function. The data are regarded as observed values of independent random variables , where
where is an unknown -dimensional parameter, and where are known dimensional explanatory variables. Write down the likelihood function for under this model.
Show that the maximum likelihood estimate satisfies an equation of the form , where is the matrix with rows , and where , with a function of and , which you should specify.
Define the deviance and find an explicit expression for in terms of and in the case of the model above.
1.II.13J
commentConsider performing a two-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) on the following data:
Explain and interpret the R commands and (slightly abbreviated) output below. In particular, you should describe the model being fitted, and comment on the hypothesis tests which are performed under the summary and anova commands.
[1]
as.vector
, length
, length
Coefficients:
Estimate Std. Error t value
(Intercept)
b2
b3
The following code fits a similar model. Briefly explain the difference between this model and the one above. Based on the output of the anova call below, say whether you prefer this model over the one above, and explain your preference.
Finally, explain what is being calculated in the code below and give the value that would be obtained by the final line of code.
1.II.28J
comment(a) In the context of the Black-Scholes formula, let be the time- 0 spot price, be the strike price, be the time to maturity, and let be the volatility. Assume that the interest rate is constant and assume absence of dividends. Write for the time- 0 price of a standard European call. The Black-Scholes formula can be written in the following form
State how the quantities and depend on and .
Assume that you sell this option at time 0 . What is your replicating portfolio at time 0 ?
[No proofs are required.]
(b) Compute the limit of as . Construct an explicit arbitrage under the assumption that European calls are traded above this limiting price.
(c) Compute the limit of as . Construct an explicit arbitrage under the assumption that European calls are traded below this limiting price.
(d) Express in terms of and the derivative
[Hint: you may find it useful to express in terms of .]
[You may use without proof the formula .]
(e) Say what is meant by implied volatility and explain why the previous results make it well-defined.
1.I.2F
commentLet be non-zero orthogonal polynomials on an interval such that the degree of is equal to for every , where the orthogonality is with respect to the inner product . If is any continuous function on orthogonal to and not identically zero, prove that must have at least distinct zeros in .
1.II
commentShow that in an acoustic plane wave the velocity and perturbation pressure are everywhere proportional and find the constant of proportionality.
Gas occupies a tube lying parallel to the -axis. In the regions and the gas has uniform density and sound speed . For the gas is cooled so that it has uniform density and sound speed . A harmonic plane wave with frequency is incident from . Show that the amplitude of the wave transmitted into relative to that of the incident wave is
where and .
What are the implications of this result if ?