Part II, 2016, Paper 3
Part II, 2016, Paper 3
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Paper 3, Section II, H
comment(a) Let be an affine variety. Define the tangent space of at a point . Say what it means for the variety to be singular at .
Define the dimension of in terms of (i) the tangent spaces of , and (ii) Krull dimension.
(b) Consider the ideal generated by the set . What is
Using the generators of the ideal, calculate the tangent space of a point in . What has gone wrong? [A complete argument is not necessary.]
(c) Calculate the dimension of the tangent space at each point for , and determine the location of the singularities of
Paper 3, Section II, G
commentConstruct a space as follows. Let each be homeomorphic to the standard 2-sphere . For each , let be the North pole and let be the South pole . Then
where for each (and indices are taken modulo 3 ).
(a) Describe the universal cover of .
(b) Compute the fundamental group of (giving your answer as a well-known group).
(c) Show that is not homotopy equivalent to the circle .
Paper 3, Section II, A
comment(a) A spinless charged particle moves in an electromagnetic field defined by vector and scalar potentials and . The wavefunction for the particle satisfies the time-dependent Schrödinger equation with Hamiltonian
Consider a gauge transformation
for some function . Define covariant derivatives with respect to space and time, and show that satisfies the Schrödinger equation with potentials and .
(b) Suppose that in part (a) the magnetic field has the form , where is a constant, and that . Find a suitable with and determine the energy levels of the Hamiltonian when the -component of the momentum of the particle is zero. Suppose in addition that the particle is constrained to lie in a rectangular region of area in the -plane. By imposing periodic boundary conditions in the -direction, estimate the degeneracy of each energy level. [You may use without proof results for a quantum harmonic oscillator, provided they are clearly stated.]
(c) An electron is a charged particle of spin with a two-component wavefunction governed by the Hamiltonian
where is the unit matrix and denotes the Pauli matrices. Find the energy levels for an electron in the constant magnetic field defined in part (b), assuming as before that the -component of the momentum of the particle is zero.
Consider such electrons confined to the rectangular region defined in part (b). Ignoring interactions between the electrons, show that the ground state energy of this system vanishes for less than some integer which you should determine. Find the ground state energy for , where is a positive integer.
Paper 3, Section II, J
comment(a) State the thinning and superposition properties of a Poisson process on . Prove the superposition property.
(b) A bi-infinite Poisson process with is a process with independent and stationary increments over . Moreover, for all , the increment has the Poisson distribution with parameter . Prove that such a process exists.
(c) Let be a bi-infinite Poisson process on of intensity . We identify it with the set of points of discontinuity of , i.e., . Show that if we shift all the points of by the same constant , then the resulting process is also a Poisson process of intensity .
Now suppose we shift every point of by or with equal probability. Show that the final collection of points is still a Poisson process of intensity . [You may assume the thinning and superposition properties for the bi-infinite Poisson process.]
Paper 3, Section II, C
commentConsider the integral
for real , where . Find and sketch, in the complex -plane, the paths of steepest descent through the endpoints and and through any saddle point(s). Obtain the leading order term in the asymptotic expansion of for large positive . What is the order of the next term in the expansion? Justify your answer.
Paper 3, Section I,
comment(a) Define what it means for a context-free grammar (CFG) to be in Chomsky normal form (CNF). Can a CFG in CNF ever define a language containing ? If denotes the result of converting an arbitrary CFG into one in CNF, state the relationship between and .
(b) Let be a CFG in CNF, and let be a word of length . Show that every derivation of in requires precisely steps. Using this, give an algorithm that, on input of any word on the terminals of , decides if or not.
(c) Convert the following CFG into a grammar in CNF:
Does in this case? Justify your answer.
Paper 3, Section II, F
comment(a) Let be a deterministic finite-state automaton. Define the extended transition function , and the language accepted by , denoted . Let , and . Prove that .
(b) Let where , and let .
(i) Show that there exist such that , where we interpret as if .
(ii) Show that .
(iii) Show that for all .
(c) Prove the following version of the pumping lemma. Suppose , with . Then can be broken up into three words such that , and for all , the word is also in .
(d) Hence show that
(i) if contains a word of length at least , then it contains infinitely many words;
(ii) if , then it contains a word of length less than ;
(iii) if contains all words in of length less than , then .
Paper 3, Section I, E
commentConsider a six-dimensional phase space with coordinates for . Compute the Poisson brackets , where .
Consider the Hamiltonian
and show that the resulting Hamiltonian system admits three Poisson-commuting independent first integrals.
Paper 3, Section I,
commentDescribe in words the unicity distance of a cryptosystem.
Denote the cryptosystem by , in the usual way, and let and be random variables and . The unicity distance is formally defined to be the least such that . Derive the formula
where , and is the alphabet of the ciphertext. Make clear any assumptions you make.
The redundancy of a language is given by . If a language has zero redundancy what is the unicity of any cryptosystem?
Paper 3, Section I, C
commentA universe contains baryonic matter with background density and density inhomogeneity , together with non-baryonic dark matter with background density and density inhomogeneity . After the epoch of radiation-matter density equality, , the background dynamics are governed by
where is the Hubble parameter.
The dark-matter density is much greater than the baryonic density and so the time-evolution of the coupled density perturbations, at any point , is described by the equations
Show that
where and are independent of time. Neglecting modes in and that decay with increasing time, show that the baryonic density inhomogeneity approaches
where is independent of time.
Briefly comment on the significance of your calculation for the growth of baryonic density inhomogeneities in the early universe.
Paper 3, Section II, C
commentThe early universe is described by equations (with units such that )
where . The universe contains only a self-interacting scalar field with interaction potential so that the density and pressure are given by
Show that
Explain the slow-roll approximation and apply it to equations (1) and (2) to show that it leads to
If with a positive constant and , show that
and that, for small , the scale factor expands to leading order in as
Comment on the relevance of this result for inflationary cosmology.
Paper 3, Section II, G
commentExplain what it means for an embedded surface in to be minimal. What is meant by an isothermal parametrization of an embedded surface ? Prove that if is isothermal then is minimal if and only if the components of are harmonic functions on . [You may assume the formula for the mean curvature of a parametrized embedded surface,
where (respectively ) are the coefficients of the first (respectively second) fundamental forms.]
Let be an embedded connected minimal surface in which is closed as a subset of , and let be a plane which is disjoint from . Assuming that local isothermal parametrizations always exist, show that if the Euclidean distance between and is attained at some point , i.e. , then is a plane parallel to .
Paper 3, Section II, E
commentConsider the dependence of the system
on the parameter . Find the fixed points and plot their location in the -plane. Hence, or otherwise, deduce that there are bifurcations at and .
Investigate the bifurcation at by making the substitutions and . Find the extended centre manifold in the form correct to second order. Find the evolution equation on the extended centre manifold to second order, and determine the stability of its fixed points.
Use a plot to show which branches of fixed points in the -plane are stable and which are unstable, and state, without calculation, the type of bifurcation at . Hence sketch the structure of the phase plane very close to the origin for in the cases (i) and (ii) .
Paper 3, Section II, E
commentThe current density in an antenna lying along the -axis takes the form
where is a constant and . Show that at distances for which both and , the retarded vector potential in Lorenz gauge is
where and . Evaluate the integral to show that
In the far-field, where , the electric and magnetic fields are given by
By calculating the Poynting vector, show that the time-averaged power radiated per unit solid angle is
[You may assume that in Lorenz gauge, the retarded potential due to a localised current distribution is
where the retarded time
Paper 3, Section II, B
commentA cylindrical pipe of radius and length contains two viscous fluids arranged axisymmetrically with fluid 1 of viscosity occupying the central region , where , and fluid 2 of viscosity occupying the surrounding annular region . The flow in each fluid is assumed to be steady and unidirectional, with velocities and respectively, with respect to cylindrical coordinates aligned with the pipe. A fixed pressure drop is applied between the ends of the pipe.
Starting from the Navier-Stokes equations, derive the equations satisfied by and , and state all the boundary conditions. Show that the pressure gradient is constant.
Solve for the velocity profile in each fluid and calculate the corresponding flow rates, and .
Derive the relationship between and that yields the same flow rate in each fluid. Comment on the behaviour of in the limits and , illustrating your comment by sketching the flow profiles.
Hint: In cylindrical coordinates ,
Paper 3, Section I, A
commentThe functions and have Laplace transforms and respectively, and for . The convolution of and is defined by
Express the Laplace transform of in terms of and .
Now suppose that and for , where . Find expressions for and by using a standard integral formula for the Gamma function. Find an expression for by using a standard integral formula for the Beta function. Hence deduce that
for all .
Paper 3, Section II, H
comment(a) Let be the 13 th cyclotomic extension of , and let be a 13 th primitive root of unity. What is the minimal polynomial of over ? What is the Galois group ? Put . Show that is a Galois extension and find .
(b) Define what is meant by a Kummer extension. Let be a field of characteristic zero and let be the th cyclotomic extension of . Show that there is a sequence of Kummer extensions such that is contained in .
Paper 3, Section II, D
commentFor a spacetime that is nearly flat, the metric can be expressed in the form
where is a flat metric (not necessarily diagonal) with constant components, and the components of and their derivatives are small. Show that
where indices are raised and lowered using .
[You may assume that
For the line element
where and its derivatives are small, show that the linearised vacuum field equations reduce to , where is the two-dimensional Laplacian operator in and .
Paper 3, Section II, G
commentDefine the chromatic polynomial of a graph . Show that if has vertices and edges then
where and for all . [You may assume the deletion-contraction relation, provided that you state it clearly.]
Show that for every graph (with ) we have . Show also that if and only if is disconnected.
Explain why is not the chromatic polynomial of any graph.
Paper 3, Section II, D
commentWhat is meant by an auto-Bäcklund transformation?
The sine-Gordon equation in light-cone coordinates is
where and is to be understood modulo . Show that the pair of equations
constitute an auto-Bäcklund transformation for (1).
By noting that is a solution to (1), use the transformation (2) to derive the soliton (or 'kink') solution to the sine-Gordon equation. Show that this solution can be expressed as
for appropriate constants and .
[Hint: You may use the fact that const.]
The following function is a solution to the sine-Gordon equation:
Verify that this represents two solitons travelling towards each other at the same speed by considering constant and taking an appropriate limit.
Paper 3, Section II, I
comment(a) Define Banach spaces and Euclidean spaces over . [You may assume the definitions of vector spaces and inner products.]
(b) Let be the space of sequences of real numbers with finitely many non-zero entries. Does there exist a norm on such that is a Banach space? Does there exist a norm such that is Euclidean? Justify your answers.
(c) Let be a normed vector space over satisfying the parallelogram law
for all . Show that is an inner product on . [You may use without proof the fact that the vector space operations and are continuous with respect to . To verify the identity , you may find it helpful to consider the parallelogram law for the pairs and
(d) Let be an incomplete normed vector space over which is not a Euclidean space, and let be its dual space with the dual norm. Is a Banach space? Is it a Euclidean space? Justify your answers.
Paper 3, Section II, F
commentState the Completeness Theorem for the first-order predicate calculus, and deduce the Compactness Theorem.
Let be a first-order theory over a signature whose axioms all have the form where is a (possibly empty) string of variables and is quantifier-free. Show that every substructure of a -model is a -model, and deduce that if is consistent then it has a model in which every element is the interpretation of a closed term of . You may assume the result that if is a substructure of and is a quantifier-free formula with free variables, then .]
Now suppose where is a quantifier-free formula with one free variable . Show that there is a finite list of closed terms of such that
Paper 3, Section , B
commentA delay model for a population of size at discrete time is given by
Show that for there is a non-trivial equilibrium, and analyse its stability. Show that, as is increased from 1 , the equilibrium loses stability at and find the approximate periodicity close to equilibrium at this point.
Paper 3, Section II, B
commentThe Fitzhugh-Nagumo model is given by
where and .
For , by considering the nullclines in the -plane, show that there is a unique equilibrium. Sketch the phase diagram
At the system is at the equilibrium, and is then 'switched on' to be for , where is a constant. Describe carefully how suitable choices of can represent a system analogous to (i) a neuron firing once, and (ii) a neuron firing repeatedly. Illustrate your answer with phase diagrams and also plots of against for each case. Find the threshold for that separates these cases. Comment briefly from a biological perspective on the behaviour of the system when and .
Paper 3, Section I, I
commentShow that the exact power of a prime dividing is . By considering the prime factorisation of , show that
Setting , deduce that for sufficiently large
Paper 3, Section II, I
commentWhat does it mean for a positive definite binary quadratic form to be reduced?
Prove that every positive definite binary quadratic form is equivalent to a reduced form, and that there are only finitely many reduced forms with given discriminant.
State a criterion for a positive integer to be represented by a positive definite binary quadratic form with discriminant , and hence determine which primes are represented by .
Paper 3, Section II, B
comment(a) Define the Jacobi and Gauss-Seidel iteration schemes for solving a linear system of the form , where and , giving formulae for the corresponding iteration matrices and in terms of the usual decomposition .
Show that both iteration schemes converge when results from discretization of Poisson's equation on a square with the five-point formula, that is when
and . [You may state the Householder-John theorem without proof.]
(b) For the matrix given in :
(i) Calculate the eigenvalues of and deduce its spectral radius .
(ii) Show that each eigenvector of is related to an eigenvector of by a transformation of the form for a suitable value of .
(iii) Deduce that . What is the significance of this result for the two iteration schemes?
[Hint: You may assume that the eigenvalues of the matrix in are
with corresponding eigenvectors
Paper 3, Section II, K
commentConsider the system in scalar variables, for :
where is given, are observed at , but and are unobservable, and are independent random variables with mean 0 and variance . Define to be the estimator of with minimum variance amongst all estimators that are unbiased and linear functions of . Suppose and its variance is . After observation at of , a new unbiased estimator of , linear in , is expressed
Find and to minimize the variance of . Hence find in terms of , and . Calculate .
Suppose are Gaussian and thus . Consider minimizing , under the constraint that the control can only depend on . Show that the value function of dynamic programming for this problem can be expressed
where and is independent of and linear in .
Paper 3, Section II, 31 A
commentA three-dimensional oscillator has Hamiltonian
where the constants are real and positive. Assuming a unique ground state, construct the general normalised eigenstate of and give a formula for its energy eigenvalue. [You may quote without proof results for a one-dimensional harmonic oscillator of mass and frequency that follow from writing and
List all states in the four lowest energy levels of in the cases:
(i) ;
(ii) and , where .
Now consider with subject to a perturbation
where is small. Compute the changes in energies for the ground state and the states at the first excited level of the original Hamiltonian, working to the leading order at which nonzero corrections occur. [You may quote without proof results from perturbation theory.]
Explain briefly why some energy levels of the perturbed Hamiltonian will be exactly degenerate. [Hint: Compare with (ii) above.]
Paper 3, Section II, J
commentLet be i.i.d. random variables from a distribution, , and consider a Bayesian model for the unknown parameter, where is a fixed constant.
(a) Derive the posterior distribution of .
(b) Construct a credible set such that
(i) for every , and
(ii) for any ,
where denotes the distribution of the infinite sequence when drawn independently from a fixed distribution.
[You may use the central limit theorem.]
Paper 3, Section II, J
comment(a) Define the Borel -algebra and the Borel functions.
(b) Give an example with proof of a set in which is not Lebesgue measurable.
(c) The Cantor set is given by
(i) Explain why is Lebesgue measurable.
(ii) Compute the Lebesgue measure of .
(iii) Is every subset of Lebesgue measurable?
(iv) Let be the function given by
Explain why is a Borel function.
(v) Using the previous parts, prove the existence of a Lebesgue measurable set which is not Borel.
Paper 3, Section II, I
comment(a) Let the finite group act on a finite set and let be the permutation character. If is 2 -transitive on , show that , where is an irreducible character of .
(b) Let , and let be the symmetric group acting naturally on the set . For any integer , write for the set of all -element subsets of , and let be the permutation character of the action of on . Compute the degree of . If , compute the character inner product .
Let if is even, and if is odd. Deduce that has distinct irreducible characters such that for all ,
(c) Let be the set of all ordered pairs with and . Let act on in the obvious way. Write for the permutation character of in this action. By considering inner products, or otherwise, prove that
where is an irreducible character. Calculate the degree of , and calculate its value on the elements and of .
Paper 3, Section II, H
commentLet be a non-constant elliptic function with respect to a lattice . Let be a fundamental parallelogram and let the degree of be . Let denote the zeros of in , and let denote the poles (both with possible repeats). By considering the integral (if required, also slightly perturbing )
show that
Let denote the Weierstrass -function with respect to . For with we set
an elliptic function with periods . Suppose and . Prove that if and only if . [You may use standard properties of the Weierstrass -function provided they are clearly stated.]
Paper 3, Section I, K
commentThe command
rainfall month+elnino+month:elnino)
performs a Box-Cox transform of the response at several values of the parameter , and produces the following plot:
We fit two linear models and obtain the Q-Q plots for each fit, which are shown below in no particular order:
Define the variable on the -axis in the output of boxcox, and match each Q-Q plot to one of the models.
After choosing the model fit.2, the researcher calculates Cook's distance for the th sample, which has high leverage, and compares it to the upper -point of an distribution, because the design matrix is of size . Provide an interpretation of this comparison in terms of confidence sets for . Is this confidence statement exact?
Paper 3, Section II, C
comment(a) Consider an ideal gas consisting of identical classical particles of mass moving freely in a volume with Hamiltonian . Show that the partition function of the gas has the form
and find as a function of the temperature .
[You may assume that for .]
(b) A monatomic gas of interacting particles is a modification of an ideal gas where any pair of particles with separation interact through a potential energy . The partition function for this gas can be written as
where . The virial expansion of the equation of state for small densities is
Using the free energy, show that
(c) The Lennard-Jones potential is
where and are positive constants. Find the separation where and the separation where has its minimum. Sketch the graph of . Calculate for this potential using the approximations
Paper 3, Section II, K
commentConsider the following two-period market model. There is a risk-free asset which pays interest at rate . There is also a risky stock with prices given by
The above diagram should be read as
and so forth.
(a) Find the risk-neutral probabilities.
(b) Consider a European put option with strike expiring at time . What is the initial no-arbitrage price of the option? How many shares should be held in each period to replicate the payout?
(c) Now consider an American put option with the same strike and expiration date. Find the optimal exercise policy, assuming immediate exercise is not allowed. Would your answer change if you were allowed to exercise the option at time 0 ?
Paper 3, Section I,
commentIn the game of 'Chicken', and drive fast cars directly at each other. If they both swerve, they both lose 10 status points; if neither swerves, they both lose 100 status points. If one swerves and the other does not, the swerver loses 20 status points and the non-swerver gains 40 status points. Find all the pairs of probabilistic strategies such that, if one driver maintains their strategy, it is not in the interest of the other to change theirs.
Paper 3, Section II,
commentSmall disturbances in a homogeneous elastic solid with density and Lamé moduli and are governed by the equation
where is the displacement. Show that a harmonic plane-wave solution
must satisfy
where the wavespeeds and are to be identified. Describe mathematically how such plane-wave solutions can be classified into longitudinal -waves and transverse - and -waves (taking the -direction as the vertical direction).
The half-space is filled with the elastic solid described above, while the slab is filled with a homogeneous elastic solid with Lamé moduli and , and wavespeeds and . There is a rigid boundary at . A harmonic plane -wave propagates from towards the interface , with displacement
How are and related? The total displacement in is the sum of and that of the reflected -wave,
Write down the form of the displacement in , and determine the (complex) reflection coefficient . Verify that regardless of the parameter values, and explain this physically.
Paper 3, Section II,
commentSmall disturbances in a homogeneous elastic solid with density and Lamé moduli and are governed by the equation
where is the displacement. Show that a harmonic plane-wave solution
must satisfy
where the wavespeeds and are to be identified. Describe mathematically how such plane-wave solutions can be classified into longitudinal -waves and transverse - and -waves (taking the -direction as the vertical direction).
The half-space is filled with the elastic solid described above, while the slab is filled with a homogeneous elastic solid with Lamé moduli and , and wavespeeds and . There is a rigid boundary at . A harmonic plane -wave propagates from towards the interface , with displacement
How are and related? The total displacement in is the sum of and that of the reflected -wave,
Write down the form of the displacement in , and determine the (complex) reflection coefficient . Verify that regardless of the parameter values, and explain this physically.