Part II, 2012, Paper 1
Part II, 2012, Paper 1
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Paper 1, Section II, I
comment(a) Let be an affine variety, its ring of functions, and let . Assume is algebraically closed. Define the tangent space at . Prove the following assertions.
(i) A morphism of affine varieties induces a linear map
(ii) If and , then has the natural structure of an affine variety, and the natural morphism of into induces an isomorphism for all .
(iii) For all , the subset is a Zariski-closed subvariety of .
(b) Show that the set of nilpotent matrices
may be realised as an affine surface in , and determine its tangent space at all points .
Define what it means for two varieties and to be birationally equivalent, and show that the variety of nilpotent matrices is birationally equivalent to .
Paper 1, Section II, G
commentDefine the notions of covering projection and of locally path-connected space. Show that a locally path-connected space is path-connected if it is connected.
Suppose and are continuous maps, the space is connected and locally path-connected and that is a covering projection. Suppose also that we are given base-points satisfying . Show that there is a continuous satisfying and if and only if the image of is contained in that of . [You may assume the path-lifting and homotopy-lifting properties of covering projections.]
Now suppose is locally path-connected, and both and are covering projections with connected domains. Show that and are homeomorphic as spaces over if and only if the images of their fundamental groups under and are conjugate subgroups of .
Paper 1, Section II, E
commentGive an account of the variational principle for establishing an upper bound on the ground-state energy of a particle moving in a potential in one dimension.
A particle of unit mass moves in the potential
with a positive constant. Explain why it is important that any trial wavefunction used to derive an upper bound on should be chosen to vanish for .
Use the trial wavefunction
where is a positive real parameter, to establish an upper bound for the energy of the ground state, and hence derive the lowest upper bound on as a function of .
Explain why the variational method cannot be used in this case to derive an upper bound for the energy of the first excited state.
Paper 1, Section II,
comment(a) Give the definition of a Poisson process with rate , using its transition rates. Show that for each , the distribution of is Poisson with a parameter to be specified.
Let and let denote the jump times of . What is the distribution of (You do not need to justify your answer.)
(b) Let . Compute the joint probability density function of given . Deduce that, given has the same distribution as the nondecreasing rearrangement of independent uniform random variables on .
(c) Starting from time 0, passengers arrive on platform at King's Cross station, with constant rate , in order to catch a train due to depart at time . Using the above results, or otherwise, find the expected total time waited by all passengers (the sum of all passengers' waiting times).
Paper 1, Section II, B
commentWhat precisely is meant by the statement that
as
Consider the Stieltjes integral
where is bounded and decays rapidly as , and . Find an asymptotic series for of the form , as , and prove that it has the asymptotic property.
In the case that , show that the coefficients satisfy the recurrence relation
and that . Hence find the first three terms in the asymptotic series.
Paper 1, Section I, A
commentConsider a heavy symmetric top of mass , pinned at point , which is a distance from the centre of mass.
(a) Working in the body frame (where is the symmetry axis of the top) define the Euler angles and show that the components of the angular velocity can be expressed in terms of the Euler angles as
(b) Write down the Lagrangian of the top in terms of the Euler angles and the principal moments of inertia .
(c) Find the three constants of motion.
Paper 1, Section I, G
commentLet and be alphabets of sizes and a respectively. What does it mean to say that is a decodable code? State Kraft's inequality.
Suppose that a source emits letters from the alphabet , each letter occurring with (known) probability . Let be the codeword-length random variable for a decodable code , where . It is desired to find a decodable code that minimizes the expected value of . Establish the lower bound , and characterise when equality occurs. [Hint. You may use without proof the Cauchy-Schwarz inequality, that (for positive )
with equality if and only if for all i.]
Paper 1, Section II, 12G
commentDefine a cyclic binary code of length .
Show how codewords can be identified with polynomials in such a way that cyclic binary codes correspond to ideals in the polynomial ring with a suitably chosen multiplication rule.
Prove that any cyclic binary code has a unique generator, that is, a polynomial of minimum degree, such that the code consists of the multiples of this polynomial. Prove that the rank of the code equals , and show that divides .
Show that the repetition and parity check codes are cyclic, and determine their generators.
Paper 1, Section I, E
commentThe number density of photons in equilibrium at temperature is given by
where is Boltzmann's constant). Show that . Show further that , where is the photon energy density.
Write down the Friedmann equation for the scale factor of a flat homogeneous and isotropic universe. State the relation between and the mass density for a radiation-dominated universe and hence deduce the time-dependence of . How does the temperature depend on time?
Paper 1, Section II, E
commentThe Friedmann equation for the scale factor of a homogeneous and isotropic universe of mass density is
where . Explain how the value of the constant affects the late-time behaviour of .
Explain briefly why in a matter-dominated (zero-pressure) universe. By considering the scale factor of a closed universe as a function of conformal time , defined by , show that
where is the present density parameter, with . Use this result to show that
where is the present Hubble parameter. Find the time at which this model universe ends in a "big crunch".
Given that , obtain an expression for the present age of the universe in terms of and , according to this model. How does it compare with the age of a flat universe?
Paper 1, Section II, I
commentDefine the geodesic curvature of a regular curve in an oriented surface . When is along a curve?
Explain briefly what is meant by the Euler characteristic of a compact surface . State the global Gauss-Bonnet theorem with boundary terms.
Let be a surface with positive Gaussian curvature that is diffeomorphic to the sphere and let be two disjoint simple closed curves in . Can both and be geodesics? Can both and have constant geodesic curvature? Justify your answers.
[You may assume that the complement of a simple closed curve in consists of two open connected regions.]
Paper 1, Section I,
commentState the Poincaré-Bendixson theorem.
A model of a chemical process obeys the second-order system
where . Show that there is a unique fixed point at and that it is unstable if . Show that trajectories enter the region bounded by the lines , and , provided . Deduce that there is a periodic orbit when .
Paper 1, Section II, B
commentA particle of mass and charge moves relativistically under the influence of a constant electric field in the positive -direction, and a constant magnetic field also in the positive -direction.
In some inertial observer's coordinate system, the particle starts at
with velocity given by
where the dot indicates differentiation with respect to the proper time of the particle. Show that the subsequent motion of the particle, as seen by the inertial observer, is a helix.
a) What is the radius of the helix as seen by the inertial observer?
b) What are the and coordinates of the axis of the helix?
c) What is the coordinate of the particle after a proper time has elapsed, as measured by the particle?
Paper 1, Section II, C
commentDefine the strain-rate tensor in terms of the velocity components . Write down the relation between , the pressure and the stress in an incompressible Newtonian fluid of viscosity . Show that the local rate of stress-working is equal to the local rate of dissipation .
An incompressible fluid of density and viscosity occupies the semi-infinite region above a rigid plane boundary which oscillates with velocity . The fluid is at rest at infinity. Determine the velocity field produced by the boundary motion after any transients have decayed.
Show that the time-averaged rate of dissipation is
per unit area of the boundary. Verify that this is equal to the time average of the rate of working by the boundary on the fluid per unit area.
Paper 1, Section I, E
commentRecall that if is analytic in a neighbourhood of , then
where is the real part of . Use this fact to construct the imaginary part of an analytic function whose real part is given by
where is real and has sufficient smoothness and decay.
Paper 1, Section II, E
comment(a) Suppose that , is analytic in the upper-half complex -plane and as . Show that the real and imaginary parts of , denoted by and respectively, satisfy the so-called Kramers-Kronig formulae:
Here, denotes the Hilbert transform, i.e.,
where denotes the principal value integral.
(b) Let the real function satisfy the Laplace equation in the upper-half complex z-plane, i.e.,
Assuming that decays for large and for large , show that is an analytic function for . Then, find an expression for in terms of .
Paper 1, Section II, 18H
commentList all subfields of the cyclotomic field obtained by adjoining all 20 th roots of unity to , and draw the lattice diagram of inclusions among them. Write all the subfields in the form or . Briefly justify your answer.
[The description of the Galois group of cyclotomic fields and the fundamental theorem of Galois theory can be used freely without proof.]
Paper 1, Section II, B
comment(i) Using the condition that the metric tensor is covariantly constant, derive an expression for the Christoffel symbol .
(ii) Show that
Hence establish the covariant divergence formula
where is the determinant of the metric tensor.
[It may be assumed that for any invertible matrix ].
(iii) The Kerr-Newman metric, describing the spacetime outside a rotating black hole of mass , charge and angular momentum per unit mass , is given in appropriate units by
where and . Explain why this metric is stationary, and make a choice of one of the parameters which reduces it to a static metric.
Show that, in the static metric obtained, the equation
for a function admits solutions of the form
where is constant and satisfies an ordinary differential equation which should be found.
Paper 1, Section I, G
commentLet be a crystallographic group of the Euclidean plane. Define the lattice and the point group of . Suppose that the lattice for is . Show that there are five different possibilities for the point group. Show that at least one of these point groups can arise from two groups that are not conjugate in the group of all isometries of the Euclidean plane.
Paper 1, Section II, G
commentDefine the axis of a loxodromic Möbius transformation acting on hyperbolic 3-space.
When do two loxodromic transformations commute? Justify your answer.
Let be a Kleinian group that contains a loxodromic transformation. Show that the fixed point of any loxodromic transformation in lies in the limit set of . Prove that the set of such fixed points is dense in the limit set. Give examples to show that the set of such fixed points can be equal to the limit set or a proper subset.
Paper 1, Section II, F
commentState Markov's inequality and Chebyshev's inequality.
Let denote the probability space of bipartite graphs with vertex classes and , with each possible edge , present, independently, with probability . Let be the number of subgraphs of that are isomorphic to the complete bipartite graph . Write down and . Hence show that is a threshold for to contain , in the sense that if then a. e. contains a , whereas if then a. e. does not contain a .
By modifying a random for suitably chosen , show that, for each , there exists a bipartite graph with vertices in each class such that but
Paper 1, Section II, D
commentState the Arnold-Liouville theorem.
Consider an integrable system with six-dimensional phase space, and assume that on any Liouville tori , where .
(a) Define the action variables and use Stokes' theorem to show that the actions are independent of the choice of the cycles.
(b) Define the generating function, and show that the angle coordinates are periodic with period .
Paper 1, Section II, G
commentWhat is meant by the dual of a normed space ? Show that is a Banach space.
Let , the space of functions possessing a bounded, continuous first derivative. Endow with the sup norm . Which of the following maps are elements of ? Give brief justifications or counterexamples as appropriate.
- ;
- .
Now suppose that is a (real) Hilbert space. State and prove the Riesz representation theorem. Describe the natural and show that it is surjective.
[All normed spaces are over . You may assume that if is a closed subspace of a Hilbert space then
Paper 1, Section II, H
commentState Zorn's lemma, and show how it may be deduced from the Axiom of Choice using the Bourbaki-Witt theorem (which should be clearly stated but not proved).
Show that, if and are distinct elements of a distributive lattice , there is a lattice homomorphism with . Indicate briefly how this result may be used to prove the completeness theorem for propositional logic.
Paper 1, Section I,
commentKrill is the main food source for baleen whales. The following model has been proposed for the coupled evolution of populations of krill and whales, with being the number of krill and being the number of whales:
where and are positive constants.
Give a biological interpretation for the form of the two differential equations.
Show that a steady state is possible with and and write down expressions for the steady-state values of and .
Determine whether this steady state is stable.
Paper 1, Section II, F
commentLet be a number field, and its ring of integers. Write down a characterisation of the units in in terms of the norm. Without assuming Dirichlet's units theorem, prove that for a quadratic field the quotient of the unit group by is cyclic (i.e. generated by one element). Find a generator in the cases and .
Determine all integer solutions of the equation for .
Paper 1, Section I, I
commentShow that the continued fraction for is .
Hence, or otherwise, find a solution to the equation in positive integers and . Write down an expression for another solution.
Paper 1, Section II, D
commentThe Poisson equation in the unit interval on is discretised with the formula
where and are the grid points.
(i) Define the above system of equations in vector form and describe the relaxed Jacobi method with relaxation parameter for solving this linear system. For and being the exact solution and the iterated solution respectively, let be the error and the iteration matrix, so that
Express in terms of the matrix , the diagonal part of and , and find the eigenvectors and the eigenvalues of .
(ii) For as above, let
be the expansion of the error with respect to the eigenvectors of . Derive conditions on such that the method converges for any , and prove that, for any such , the rate of convergence of is not faster than .
(iii) Show that, for some , the high frequency components of the error tend to zero much faster than . Determine the optimal parameter which provides the largest suppression of the high frequency components per iteration, and find the corresponding attenuation factor (i.e., the least such that for .
Paper 1, Section II, B
commentLet for all . Consider the partial differential equation for ,
subject to the Cauchy condition .
i) Compute the solution of the Cauchy problem by the method of characteristics.
ii) Prove that the domain of definition of the solution contains
Paper 1, Section II, A
commentLet and be the simple harmonic oscillator annihilation and creation operators, respectively. Write down the commutator .
Consider a new operator , where with a real constant. Show that
Consider the Hamiltonian
where and are real and such that . Assuming that and , with a real constant, show that
Thus, calculate the energy of in terms of and , where is an eigenvalue of .
Assuming that , calculate in terms of and . Find the possible values of . Finally, show that the energy eigenvalues of the system are
Paper 1, Section II,
commentProve that, if is complete sufficient for , and is a function of , then is the minimum variance unbiased estimator of .
When the parameter takes a value , observables arise independently from the exponential distribution , having probability density function
Show that the family of distributions
with probability density function
is a conjugate family for Bayesian inference about (where is the Gamma function).
Show that the expectation of , under prior distribution (1), is , where . What is the prior variance of ? Deduce the posterior expectation and variance of , given .
Let denote the limiting form of the posterior expectation of as . Show that is the minimum variance unbiased estimator of . What is its variance?
Paper 1, Section II, J
commentCarefully state and prove Jensen's inequality for a convex function , where is an interval. Assuming that is strictly convex, give necessary and sufficient conditions for the inequality to be strict.
Let be a Borel probability measure on , and suppose has a strictly positive probability density function with respect to Lebesgue measure. Let be the family of all strictly positive probability density functions on with respect to Lebesgue measure such that . Let be a random variable with distribution . Prove that the mapping
has a unique maximiser over , attained when almost everywhere.
Paper 1, Section II, 19H
commentWrite down the character table of .
Suppose that is a group of order 60 containing 24 elements of order 5,20 elements of order 3 and 15 elements of order 2 . Calculate the character table of , justifying your answer.
[You may assume the formula for induction of characters, provided you state it clearly.]
Paper 1, Section II, I
comment(i) Let . Show that the unit circle is the natural boundary of the function element .
(ii) Let ; explain carefully how a holomorphic function may be defined on satisfying the equation
Let denote the connected component of the space of germs (of holomorphic functions on corresponding to the function element , with associated holomorphic . Determine the number of points of in when (a) , and (b) .
[You may assume any standard facts about analytic continuations that you may need.]
Paper 1, Section I, K
commentLet be independent with , and
where is a vector of regressors and is a vector of parameters. Write down the likelihood of the data as a function of . Find the unrestricted maximum likelihood estimator of , and the form of the maximum likelihood estimator under the logistic model (1).
Show that the deviance for a comparison of the full (saturated) model to the generalised linear model with canonical link (1) using the maximum likelihood estimator can be simplified to
Finally, obtain an expression for the deviance residual in this generalised linear model.
Paper 1, Section II, K
commentThe treatment for a patient diagnosed with cancer of the prostate depends on whether the cancer has spread to the surrounding lymph nodes. It is common to operate on the patient to obtain samples from the nodes which can then be analysed under a microscope. However it would be preferable if an accurate assessment of nodal involvement could be made without surgery. For a sample of 53 prostate cancer patients, a number of possible predictor variables were measured before surgery. The patients then had surgery to determine nodal involvement. We want to see if nodal involvement can be accurately predicted from the available variables and determine which ones are most important. The variables take the values 0 or 1 .
An indicator no yes of nodal involvement.
aged The patient's age, split into less than and 60 or over .
stage A measurement of the size and position of the tumour observed by palpation with the fingers. A serious case is coded as 1 and a less serious case as 0 .
grade Another indicator of the seriousness of the cancer which is determined by a pathology reading of a biopsy taken by needle before surgery. A value of 1 indicates a more serious case of cancer.
xray Another measure of the seriousness of the cancer taken from an X-ray reading. A value of 1 indicates a more serious case of cancer.
acid The level of acid phosphatase in the blood serum where high and low.
A binomial generalised linear model with a logit link was fitted to the data to predict nodal involvement and the following output obtained:
Part II, 2012 List of Questions
[TURN OVER (a) Give an interpretation of the coefficient of xray.
(b) Give the numerical value of the sum of the squared deviance residuals.
(c) Suppose that the predictors, stage, grade and xray are positively correlated. Describe the effect that this correlation is likely to have on our ability to determine the strength of these predictors in explaining the response.
(d) The probability of observing a value of under a Chi-squared distribution with 52 degrees of freedom is . What does this information tell us about the null model for this data? Justify your answer.
(e) What is the lowest predicted probability of the nodal involvement for any future patient?
(f) The first plot in Figure 1 shows the (Pearson) residuals and the fitted values. Explain why the points lie on two curves.
(g) The second plot in Figure 1 shows the value of where indicates that patient was dropped in computing the fit. The values for each predictor, including the intercept, are shown. Could a single case change our opinion of which predictors are important in predicting the response?
Figure 1: The plot on the left shows the Pearson residuals and the fitted values. The plot on the right shows the changes in the regression coefficients when a single point is omitted for each predictor.
Paper 1, Section II, C
commentA meson consists of two quarks, attracted by a linear potential energy
where is the separation between the quarks and is a constant. Treating the quarks classically, compute the vibrational partition function that arises from the separation of quarks. What is the average separation of the quarks at temperature ?
Consider an ideal gas of these mesons that have the orientation of the quarks fixed so the mesons do not rotate. Compute the total partition function of the gas. What is its heat capacity ?
[Note: ]
Paper 1, Section II, J
commentConsider a multi-period binomial model with a risky asset and a riskless asset . In each period, the value of the risky asset is multiplied by if the period was good, and by otherwise. The riskless asset is worth at time , where .
(i) Assuming that and that
show how any contingent claim to be paid at time 1 can be priced and exactly replicated. Briefly explain the significance of the condition (1), and indicate how the analysis of the single-period model extends to many periods.
(ii) Now suppose that . We assume that , and that the risky asset is worth at time zero. Find the time- 0 value of an American put option with strike price and expiry at time , and find the optimal exercise policy. (Assume that the option cannot be exercised immediately at time zero.)
Paper 1, Section I, F
commentState a version of the Baire category theorem for a complete metric space. Let be the set of real numbers with the property that, for each positive integer , there exist integers and with such that
Is an open subset of ? Is a dense subset of ? Justify your answers.
Paper 1, Section II, 39D
commentWrite down the linearized equations governing motion in an inviscid compressible fluid and, assuming an adiabatic relationship , derive the wave equation for the velocity potential . Obtain from these linearized equations the energy equation
and give expressions for the acoustic energy density and the acoustic intensity, or energyflux vector, I.
An inviscid compressible fluid occupies the half-space , and is bounded by a very thin flexible membrane of negligible mass at an undisturbed position . Small acoustic disturbances with velocity potential in the fluid cause the membrane to be deflected to . The membrane is supported by springs that, in the deflected state, exert a restoring force on an element of the membrane. Show that the dispersion relation for waves proportional to propagating freely along the membrane is
where is the density of the fluid and is the sound speed. Show that in such a wave the component of mean acoustic intensity perpendicular to the membrane is zero.