Functional Equations

Daniel Gruszczynski
July 16, 2015
In this article, I discuss functional equations and some of the general methods used to solve them. Since there is no comprehensive theory of functional
equations, what follows are several important examples and classes of equations
that have been worked out.

What is a functional equation?

The following definitions come from Marek Kuczmas survey on functional equations [1].
Definition 1. A term satisfies the following conditions:
1. Independent variables are terms
2. If t1 , ..., tp are terms and f (x1 , ..., xp ) is a p-place function, then f (t1 , ..., tp )
is a term.
3. There exist no other terms.
Definition 2. A functional equation is an equality of terms t1 = t2 which
contain at least one unknown function and a finite number of independent variables.
Example 1. Suppose we have the functional equation:
f (x + y) = f (xy) + y.
Our goal is to find the functions f that satisfy the above condition for a given
domain. It should be clear that our solution depends on whether we consider
x and y to be, say, rational numbers or real numbers. And unlike differential
equations, we may have a unique solution to a single condition (as opposed to
a class of solutions differing only but a constant). Well discuss this later.

Cauchy Equation

Before we discuss techniques, let us view a simple yet significant example.

Cauchys functional equation is
f (x + y) = f (x) + f (y)

(C)

and the solutions f are called additive functions. For now, we focus our
attention to the real numbers. That is, we want to find all functions f : R R
such that (C) holds for all x, y R.
Lemma 1. If f is a solution to (C), then f (nx) = nf (x) holds for any positive
integer n.
Proof. We prove this by induction. If n = 1, we have f (1x) = f (x) = 1f (x)
trivially. If n = 2, then f (2x) = f (x + x) = f (x) + f (x) = 2f (x). Now suppose
this holds for all positive integers j < n, and consider f (nx). By the inductive
hypothesis,
f (nx) = f ((n 1)x + x) = f ((n 1)x) + f (x) = (n 1)f (x) + f (x) = nf (x).

Corollary 1. If f is a solution to (C), then f (0) = 0.

Proof. Take x = 0. Then, f (0) = f (n0) = nf (0) for all n. This implies that
f (0) = 0.
Corollary 2. If f is a solution to (C), then f (x) = f (x).
Proof. Since 0 = f (0) = f (x x) = f (x) + f (x), our result follows.
Lemma 2. If f is a solution to (C) and q is a rational number, then f (qx) =
qf (x) holds for each x R.
Proof. Let q = m/n for integers m and n 6= 0. If q = 0, f (0x) = f (0) = 0 =
0f (x). Now consider q 6= 0. If q < 0, take m to be positive and n negative.
We prove that nf (qx) = mf (x). By the above lemma, mf (x) = f (mx) and
nf (qx) = f (nqx) = f (mx); thus mf (x) = nf (qx), as desired. (Note that
Corollary 2 was used for n)
Theorem 1. Every continuous solution f to (C) has the form f (x) = cx for
some constant c R.

References
[1] M. Kuczma, A survey of the theory of functional equations, Publications
de la Faculte DElectrotechnique de LUniversity a Belgrade, 1964.