Part II, 2013, Paper 3
Part II, 2013, Paper 3
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Paper 3, Section II, H
commentLet be the plane curve given by the polynomial
over the field of complex numbers, where .
(i) Show that is nonsingular.
(ii) Compute the divisors of the rational functions
on .
(iii) Consider the morphism . Compute its ramification points and degree.
(iv) Show that a basis for the space of regular differentials on is
where
Paper 3, Section II, G
comment(i) State, but do not prove, the Mayer-Vietoris theorem for the homology groups of polyhedra.
(ii) Calculate the homology groups of the -sphere, for every .
(iii) Suppose that and . Calculate the homology groups of the subspace of defined by .
Paper 3, Section II, D
commentWrite down the classical Hamiltonian for a particle of mass , electric charge and momentum p moving in the background of an electromagnetic field with vector and scalar potentials and .
Consider the case of a constant uniform magnetic field, and . Working in the gauge with and , show that Hamilton's equations,
admit solutions corresponding to circular motion in the plane with angular frequency .
Show that, in the same gauge, the coordinates of the centre of the circle are related to the instantaneous position and momentum of the particle by
Write down the quantum Hamiltonian for the system. In the case of a uniform constant magnetic field discussed above, find the allowed energy levels. Working in the gauge specified above, write down quantum operators corresponding to the classical quantities and defined in (1) above and show that they are conserved.
[In this question you may use without derivation any facts relating to the energy spectrum of the quantum harmonic oscillator provided they are stated clearly.]
Paper 3, Section II, J
commentDefine the Moran model. Describe briefly the infinite sites model of mutations.
We henceforth consider a population with individuals evolving according to the rules of the Moran model. In addition we assume:
the allelic type of any individual at any time lies in a given countable state space ;
individuals are subject to mutations at constant rate , independently of the population dynamics;
each time a mutation occurs, if the allelic type of the individual was , it changes to with probability , where is a given Markovian transition matrix on that is symmetric:
(i) Show that, if two individuals are sampled at random from the population at some time , then the time to their most recent common ancestor has an exponential distribution, with a parameter that you should specify.
(ii) Let be the total number of mutations that accumulate on the two branches separating these individuals from their most recent common ancestor. Show that is a geometric random variable, and specify its probability parameter .
(iii) The first individual is observed to be of type . Explain why the probability that the second individual is also of type is
where is a Markov chain on with transition matrix and is independent of .
Paper 3, Section II, B
commentLet
where and are smooth, and for also , , and . Show that, as ,
Consider the Bessel function
Show that, as ,
Paper 3, Section I, B
commentTwo equal masses are connected to each other and to fixed points by three springs of force constant and as shown in the figure.
(i) Write down the Lagrangian and derive the equations describing the motion of the system in the direction parallel to the springs.
(ii) Find the normal modes and their frequencies. Comment on your results.
Paper 3, Section I, H
commentDescribe briefly the Rabin cipher with modulus , explaining how it can be deciphered by the intended recipient and why it is difficult for an eavesdropper to decipher it.
The Cabinet decides to communicate using Rabin ciphers to maintain confidentiality. The Cabinet Secretary encrypts a message, represented as a positive integer , using the Rabin cipher with modulus (with ) and publishes both the encrypted message and the modulus. The Defence Secretary deciphers this message to read it but then foolishly encrypts it again using a Rabin cipher with a different modulus (with and publishes the newly encrypted message and . Mr Rime (the Leader of the Opposition) knows this has happened. Explain how Rime can work out what the original message was using the two different encrypted versions.
Can Rime decipher other messages sent out by the Cabinet using the original modulus ?
Paper 3, Section I, D
commentThe number densities of protons of mass or neutrons of mass in kinetic equilibrium at temperature , in the absence of any chemical potentials, are each given by (with or )
where is Boltzmann's constant and is the spin degeneracy.
Use this to show, to a very good approximation, that the ratio of the number of neutrons to protons at a temperature is given by
where . Explain any approximations you have used.
The reaction rate for weak interactions between protons and neutrons at energies is given by and the expansion rate of the universe at these energies is given by . Give an example of a weak interaction that can maintain equilibrium abundances of protons and neutrons at these energies. Show how the final abundance of neutrons relative to protons can be calculated and use it to estimate the mass fraction of the universe in helium- 4 after nucleosynthesis.
What would have happened to the helium abundance if the proton and neutron masses had been exactly equal?
Paper 3, Section II, D
commentThe contents of a spatially homogeneous and isotropic universe are modelled as a finite mass of pressureless material whose radius evolves from some constant reference radius in proportion to the time-dependent scale factor , with
(i) Show that this motion leads to expansion governed by Hubble's Law. If this universe is expanding, explain why there will be a shift in the frequency of radiation between its emission from a distant object and subsequent reception by an observer. Define the redshift of the observed object in terms of the values of the scale factor at the times of emission and reception.
(ii) The expanding universal mass is given a small rotational perturbation, with angular velocity , and its angular momentum is subsequently conserved. If deviations from spherical expansion can be neglected, show that its linear rotational velocity will fall as , where you should determine the value of . Show that this perturbation will become increasingly insignificant compared to the expansion velocity as the universe expands if .
(iii) A distant cloud of intermingled hydrogen (H) atoms and carbon monoxide (CO) molecules has its redshift determined simultaneously in two ways: by detecting radiation from atomic hydrogen and by detecting radiation from rotational transitions in CO molecules. The ratio of the atomic transition frequency to the CO rotational transition frequency is proportional to , where is the fine structure constant. It is suggested that there may be a small difference in the value of the constant between the times of emission and reception of the radiation from the cloud.
Show that the difference in the redshift values for the cloud, , determined separately by observations of the and transitions, is related to , the difference in values at the times of reception and emission, by
(iv) The universe today contains of its total density in the form of pressureless matter and in the form of a dark energy with constant redshift-independent density. If these are the only two significant constituents of the universe, show that their densities were equal when the scale factor of the universe was approximately equal to of its present value.
Paper 3, Section II, H
commentWe say that a parametrization of a smooth surface is isothermal if the coefficients of the first fundamental form satisfy and , for some smooth non-vanishing function on . For an isothermal parametrization, prove that
where denotes the unit normal vector and the mean curvature, which you may assume is given by the formula
where and are coefficients in the second fundamental form.
Given a parametrization of a surface , we consider the complex valued functions on :
Show that is isothermal if and only if . If is isothermal, show that is a minimal surface if and only if are holomorphic functions of the complex variable
Consider the holomorphic functions on (with complex coordinate on given by
Find a smooth map for which and the defined by (2) satisfy the equations (1). Show furthermore that extends to a smooth map . If is the complex coordinate on , show that
Paper 3, Section I, C
commentA one-dimensional map is defined by
where is a parameter. What is the condition for a bifurcation of a fixed point of ?
Let . Find the fixed points and show that bifurcations occur when and . Sketch the bifurcation diagram, showing the locus and stability of the fixed points in the plane and indicating the type of each bifurcation.
Paper 3, Section II, C
commentLet be a continuous map of an interval . Explain what is meant by the statements (a) has a horseshoe and (b) is chaotic according to Glendinning's definition of chaos.
Assume that has a 3-cycle with , . Prove that has a horseshoe. [You may assume the Intermediate Value Theorem.]
Represent the effect of on the intervals and by means of a directed graph. Explain how the existence of the 3 -cycle corresponds to this graph.
The map has a 4-cycle with , and . If is necessarily chaotic? [You may use a suitable directed graph as part of your argument.]
How does your answer change if ?
Paper 3, Section II, 36B
comment(i) Obtain Maxwell's equations in empty space from the action functional
where .
(ii) A modification of Maxwell's equations has the action functional
where again and is a constant. Obtain the equations of motion of this theory and show that they imply .
(iii) Show that the equations of motion derived from admit solutions of the form
where is a constant 4-vector, and the 4 -vector satisfies and .
(iv) Show further that the tensor
is conserved, that is .
Paper 3, Section II, A
commentA disk hovers on a cushion of air above an air-table - a fine porous plate through which a constant flux of air is pumped. Let the disk have a radius and a weight and hover at a low height above the air-table. Let the volume flux of air, which has density and viscosity , be per unit surface area. The conditions are such that . Explain the significance of this restriction.
Find the pressure distribution in the air under the disk. Show that this pressure balances the weight of the disk if
Paper 3, Section I, E
commentLet a real-valued function be the real part of a complex-valued function which is analytic in the neighbourhood of a point , where Derive a formula for in terms of and use it to find an analytic function whose real part is
and such that .
Paper 3, Section II, I
commentLet be a prime number and a field of characteristic . Let be the Frobenius map defined by for all .
(i) Prove that is a field automorphism when is a finite field.
(ii) Is the same true for an arbitrary algebraic extension of ? Justify your answer.
(iii) Let be the rational function field in variables where over . Determine the image of , and show that makes into an extension of degree over a subfield isomorphic to . Is it a separable extension?
Paper 3, Section II, D
commentThe Schwarzschild metric for a spherically symmetric black hole is given by
where we have taken units in which we set . Consider a photon moving within the equatorial plane , along a path with affine parameter . Using a variational principle with Lagrangian
or otherwise, show that
for constants and . Deduce that
Assume now that the photon approaches from infinity. Show that the impact parameter (distance of closest approach) is given by
Denote the right hand side of equation as . By sketching in each of the cases below, or otherwise, show that:
(a) if , the photon is deflected but not captured by the black hole;
(b) if , the photon is captured;
(c) if , the photon orbit has a particular form, which should be described.
Paper 3, Section I,
commentLet be a rank 2 lattice in the Euclidean plane. Show that the group of all Euclidean isometries of the plane that map onto itself is a discrete group. List the possible sizes of the point groups for and give examples to show that point groups of these sizes do arise.
[You may quote any standard results without proof.]
Paper 3, Section II, F
commentLet be a graph of order and average degree . Let be the adjacency matrix of and let be its characteristic polynomial. Show that and . Show also that is twice the number of triangles in .
The eigenvalues of are . Prove that .
Evaluate . Show that and infer that . Does there exist, for each , a graph with for which ?
Paper 3, Section II, C
commentLet and be two complex-valued matrix functions, smoothly differentiable in their variables. We wish to explore the solution of the overdetermined linear system
for some twice smoothly differentiable vector function .
Prove that, if the overdetermined system holds, then the functions and obey the zero curvature representation
Let and
where subscripts denote derivatives, is the complex conjugate of and is a constant. Find the compatibility condition on the function so that and obey the zero curvature representation.
Paper 3, Section II, F
commentState the Stone-Weierstrass Theorem for real-valued functions.
State Riesz's Lemma.
Let be a compact, Hausdorff space and let be a subalgebra of separating the points of and containing the constant functions. Fix two disjoint, non-empty, closed subsets and of .
(i) If show that there exists such that on , and on . Explain briefly why there is such that on .
(ii) Show that there is an open cover of , elements of and positive integers such that
for each .
(iii) Using the inequality
show that for sufficiently large positive integers , the element
of satisfies
for each .
(iv) Show that the element of satisfies
Now let with . By considering the sets and , show that there exists such that . Deduce that is dense in .
Paper 3, Section II, G
commentExplain carefully what is meant by syntactic entailment and semantic entailment in the propositional calculus. State the Completeness Theorem for the propositional calculus, and deduce the Compactness Theorem.
Suppose and are pairwise disjoint sets of primitive propositions, and let and be propositional formulae such that is a theorem of the propositional calculus. Consider the set
Show that is inconsistent, and deduce that there exists such that both and are theorems. [Hint: assuming is consistent, take a suitable valuation of and show that
is inconsistent. The Deduction Theorem may be assumed without proof.]
Paper 3, Section I, A
commentAn immune system creates a burst of new white blood cells with probability per unit time. White blood cells die with probability each per unit time. Write down the master equation for , the probability that there are white blood cells at time .
Given that initially, find an expression for the mean of .
Show that the variance of has the form and find and .
If the immune system were modified to produce times as many cells per burst but with probability per unit time divided by a factor , how would the mean and variance of the number of cells change?
Paper 3, Section II, A
commentAn activator-inhibitor system is described by the equations
where .
Find and sketch the range of for which the spatially homogeneous system has a stable stationary solution with and .
Considering spatial perturbations of the form about the solution found above, find conditions for the system to be unstable. Sketch this region in the plane for fixed .
Find , the critical wavenumber at the onset of the instability, in terms of and .
Paper 3, Section I, I
commentState the Chinese Remainder Theorem.
A composite number is defined to be a Carmichael number if whenever . Show that a composite is Carmichael if and only if is square-free and divides for all prime factors of . [You may assume that, for an odd prime and an integer, is a cyclic group.]
Show that if with all three factors prime, then is Carmichael.
Paper 3, Section II, I
commentDefine equivalence of binary quadratic forms and show that equivalent forms have the same discriminant.
Show that an integer is properly represented by a binary quadratic form of discriminant if and only if is soluble in integers. Which primes are represented by a form of discriminant ?
What does it mean for a positive definite form to be reduced? Find all reduced forms of discriminant . For each member of your list find the primes less than 100 represented by the form.
Paper 3, Section II, C
comment(i) Suppose that is a real matrix, and that and are given so that . Further, let be a non-singular matrix such that , where is the first coordinate vector and . Let . Prove that the eigenvalues of are together with the eigenvalues of the bottom right submatrix of .
(ii) Suppose again that is a real matrix, and that two linearly independent vectors are given such that the linear subspace spanned by and is invariant under the action of , that is
Denote by an matrix whose two columns are the vectors and , and let be a non-singular matrix such that is upper triangular, that is
Again, let . Prove that the eigenvalues of are the eigenvalues of the top left submatrix of together with the eigenvalues of the bottom right submatrix of
Paper 3, Section II, K
commentA particle follows a discrete-time trajectory in given by
where is a white noise sequence with and . Given , we wish to choose to minimize .
Show that for some this problem can be reduced to one of controlling a scalar state .
Find, in terms of , the optimal . What is the change in minimum achievable when the system starts in as compared to when it starts in ?
Consider now a trajectory starting at . What value of is optimal if we wish to minimize ?
Paper 3, Section II, C
commentDefine the parabolic boundary of the domain for .
Let be a smooth real-valued function on which satisfies the inequality
Assume that the coefficients and are smooth functions and that there exist positive constants such that everywhere, and . Prove that
[Here is the positive part of the function .]
Consider a smooth real-valued function on such that
everywhere, and for all . Deduce from that if for all then for all . [Hint: Consider and compute
Paper 3, Section II, E
commentA particle moves in one dimension in an infinite square-well potential for and for . Find the energy eigenstates. Show that the energy eigenvalues are given by for integer , where is a constant which you should find.
The system is perturbed by the potential . Show that the energy of the level remains unchanged to first order in . Show that the ground-state wavefunction is
where and are numerical constants which you should find. Briefly comment on the conservation of parity in the unperturbed and perturbed systems.
Paper 3, Section II, K
commentWhat is meant by a convex decision problem? State and prove a theorem to the effect that, in a convex decision problem, there is no point in randomising. [You may use standard terms without defining them.]
The sample space, parameter space and action space are each the two-point set . The observable takes value 1 with probability when the parameter , and with probability when . The loss function is 0 if , otherwise 1 . Describe all the non-randomised decision rules, compute their risk functions, and plot these as points in the unit square. Identify an inadmissible non-randomised decision rule, and a decision rule that dominates it.
Show that the minimax rule has risk function , and is Bayes against a prior distribution that you should specify. What is its Bayes risk? Would a Bayesian with this prior distribution be bound to use the minimax rule?
Paper 3, Section II,
commentLet be an integrable random variable with . Show that the characteristic function is differentiable with . [You may use without proof standard convergence results for integrals provided you state them clearly.]
Let be a sequence of independent random variables, all having the same distribution as . Set . Show that in distribution. Deduce that in probability. [You may not use the Strong Law of Large Numbers.]
Paper 3, Section II, G
commentSuppose that and are complex representations of the finite groups and respectively. Use and to construct a representation of on and show that its character satisfies
for each .
Prove that if and are irreducible then is irreducible as a representation of . Moreover, show that every irreducible complex representation of arises in this way.
Is it true that every complex representation of is of the form with a complex representation of for Justify your answer.
Paper 3, Section II, I
commentLet be a lattice in where , and let be the complex torus
(i) Give the definition of an elliptic function with respect to . Show that there is a bijection between the set of elliptic functions with respect to and the set of holomorphic maps from to the Riemann sphere. Next, show that if is an elliptic function with respect to and , then is constant.
(ii) Assume that
defines a meromorphic function on , where the sum converges uniformly on compact subsets of . Show that is an elliptic function with respect to . Calculate the order of .
Let be an elliptic function with respect to on , which is holomorphic on and whose only zeroes in the closed parallelogram with vertices are simple zeroes at the points . Show that is a non-zero constant multiple of .
Paper 3, Section I, J
commentConsider the linear model where , and , with independent random variables. The matrix is known and is of full rank . Give expressions for the maximum likelihood estimators and of and respectively, and state their joint distribution. Show that is unbiased whereas is biased.
Suppose that a new variable is to be observed, satisfying the relationship
where is known, and independently of . We propose to predict by . Identify the distribution of
where
Paper 3, Section II, 35A
comment(i) Briefly describe the microcanonical ensemble.
(ii) For quantum mechanical systems the energy levels are discrete. Explain why we can write the probability distribution in this case as
What assumption do we make for the energy interval ?
Consider independent linear harmonic oscillators of equal frequency . Their total energy is given by
Here is the excitation number of oscillator .
(iii) Show that, for fixed and , the number of possibilities to distribute the excitations over oscillators (i.e. the number of different choices consistent with ) is given by
[Hint: You may wish to consider the set of oscillators plus "additional" excitations and what it means to choose objects from this set.]
(iv) Using the probability distribution of part (ii), calculate the probability distribution for the "first" oscillator as a function of its energy .
(v) If then exactly one value of will correspond to a total energy inside the interval . In this case, show that
Approximate this result in the limit .
Paper 3, Section II, J
commentSuppose that is a sequence of independent and identically distributed random variables such that for all . Each day, an agent receives an income, the income on day being . After receiving this income, his wealth is . From this wealth, he chooses to consume , and invests the remainder in a bank account which pays a daily interest rate of . Write down the equation for the evolution of .
Suppose we are given constants , and define the functions
where . The agent's objective is to attain
where the supremum is taken over all adapted sequences . If the value function is defined for by
with , explain briefly why you expect the to satisfy
Show that the solution to has the form
for constants to be identified. What is the form of the consumption choices that achieve the supremum in ?
Paper 3, Section I,
commentState Brouwer's fixed point theorem. Let be a continuous function with the property that for all . Show that is surjective.
Paper 3, Section II, F
commentSuppose that are distinct points. Let be an infinitely differentiable real-valued function on an open interval containing . Let be the unique polynomial of degree at most such that for . Show that for each there is some such that
Now take . Show that
for all . Deduce that there is a polynomial of degree at most such that
for all .
Paper 3, Section II, C
commentThe dispersion relation for sound waves of frequency in a stationary homogeneous gas is , where is the speed of sound and is the wavenumber. Derive the dispersion relation for sound waves of frequency in a uniform flow with velocity U.
For a slowly-varying medium with local dispersion relation , derive the ray-tracing equations
explaining carefully the meaning of the notation used.
Suppose that two-dimensional sound waves with initial wavenumber are generated at the origin in a gas occupying the half-space . If the gas has a slowlyvarying mean velocity , where , show:
(a) that if and the waves reach a maximum height (which should be identified), and then return to the level in a finite time;
(b) that if and then there is no bound on the height to which the waves propagate.
Comment briefly on the existence, or otherwise, of a quiet zone.