Counterintuitive PDE After thinking about it for a while and consulting other students, no one s

zagonek34

zagonek34

Answered question

2022-01-15

Counterintuitive PDE
After thinking about it for a while and consulting other students, no one seems to be able to find an example of the following:
Given the PDE
fx=0 on U=(x,y)R2;y>0,1<x2+y2<4
I am looking for a solution f that does not only depend on y.
How can this be?!
The exercise is taken form Lees

Answer & Explanation

Thomas White

Thomas White

Beginner2022-01-16Added 40 answers

The Mean Value Theorem implies that any function f differentiable on U must be constant w.r.t. x for any fixed y.
There is an error in the text - it should say y>0 instead of x>0.
Joseph Fair

Joseph Fair

Beginner2022-01-17Added 34 answers

I will use the corrected version mentioned by Douglas, i.e. U will be the domain defined by y>0 and 1<x2+y2<4.
Consider a C function ϕ(y) which is equal to 1 for negative y, 0 for y12 and strictly decreasing for 0<y<12.
The required function f is then defined by:
f(x,y)=ϕ(y) if (x,y)U and x0
f(x,y)=+ϕ(y) if (x,y)U and x0
It does not only depend on y since f(32,14)<0 and f(+32,14)>0. Nevertheless we do have fx=0
alenahelenash

alenahelenash

Expert2022-01-24Added 556 answers

f can be locally but not globally independent of x. For |y|<1 the function can have different values on the left and right sides of the annulus. The restriction of the function to the left or the right side depends only on y. For example, f=sgn(x)(1y2) for |y|1 and 0 in the rest of the region.

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