LECTURE 11: IMPLICIT RELATIONS

Reference: Pemberton & Rau Section 15.1 p295-298

An equation of the form

F ( x, y )  0
is called an implicit relation between the variables x and y, in contrast with the more
familiar explicit form
y  f (x)
Sometimes the implicit relation can be reduced to explicit form by simple algebraic
manipulation. Thus, for xy  0 , the equation xy-3=0 is obviously equivalent to y=3/x: in
this case the given implicit relation does indeed define y as a function of x.

In many cases, however, the situation is not so straightforward.

Local solutions
Let ( x 0 , y 0 ) be a point in the xy-plane satisfying the implicit relation F ( x, y )  0 . We

say that y  f (x) is the unique local solution of the relation in the neighbourhood of

( x 0 , y 0 ) if, for all points in the xy-plane sufficiently close to ( x 0 , y 0 ) , we have

F ( x, y )  0 if and only if y  f (x) .

The fundamental result on unique local solutions is as follows.

Proposition
Let F be a smooth function. Suppose that F ( x 0 , y 0 )  0 and F2 ( x 0 , y 0 )  0 . Then the

equation F ( x, y )  0 has a unique local solution y  f (x) in the neighbourhood of the

point ( x 0 , y 0 ) .

Under the above assumptions, we can get an expression for f ( x 0 ) in terms of

x 0 and y 0 . This is especially useful when, as is often the case, it is hard or impossible to

obtain an explicit algebraic expression for f (x) .

The formula for the derivative of the local solution is called the rule of implicit
differentiation and may be written as follows:
 dy F F
 /
dx x y

Exercises: Pemberton & Rau 15.1.1