PH 205: Mathematical methods of physics

Problem Set 1
1. A simple LC circuit consists of an inductor of inductance L connected to a capacitor of capacitance C.
(a) What is the dierential equation obeyed by I(t), the current in the circuit as a function of time t?
(b) Show that all possible solutions of the above dierential equation form a vector space over R. What is the
dimension of this vector space?
(c) What are appropriate orthonormal basis vectors for this vector space (i.e. the inner product of the basis
vectors is zero if they are dierent and equal to unity if they are the same)? What is a suitable denition
of this inner product?
2. Now suppose there are two identical LC circuits of the sort described in the previous problem but with their
inductors coupled through a mutual inductance M. Assume that the self inductance L and capacitance C of
each circuit are the same as in the previous problem. The currents in the two circuits as functions of time are
respectively I
1
(t) and I
2
(t).
(a) What are the dierential equations for I
1
(t) and I
2
(t)?
(b) Show that all possible solutions I
1
(t) and I
2
(t) form a vector space over R. What is the dimension of this
space?
(c) Assume that M = 3L/5. In analogy with 1(c), dene appropriate orthonormal basis vectors with a suitable
inner product.
(d) Will the choice of inner product for the previous part work for any value of M?
3. Now assume that we write the currents in problem 2 as I(t) = Re[I(t)], where I(t) =
(
I
1
(t)
I
2
(t)
)
is an array of
complex currents I
1
(t) and I
2
(t) for the two circuits.
(a) Argue that I(t) forms a vector space over C, the eld of complex numbers.
(b) Now, show that a vector I can be dened corresponding to I(t) in terms of basis vectors e
i
which is given
by
I =

i
e
i
,
where e
i
C. What are the appropriate e
i
and what is the minimum number required?
(c) What is a suitable denition of the scalar product e
i
.e
j
in analogy with 2(c) for M = 3L/5?
4. A set of linearly independent vectors {u
i
} spans a vector space V over a eld F.
(a) Show that this is the largest possible linearly independent set of vectors in V .
(b) Show that any smaller linearly independent set of vectors does not span V .
(c) As a consequence of the above two results, every set of linearly independent vectors which spans V has the
same size, which is the dimension of V , dim(V ).
5. In this problem you will prove certain statements relating to subspaces of a vector space.
(a) If U and W are both subspaces of V over a eld F, show that U W is also a subspace of V over F.
(b) The sum space U + W is the set of all vectors in V which can be written as v = u + w, where u U and
w W. Show that U + W is also a vector space over F.
(c) Finally show that dim(U +W) = dim(U) +dim(W) dim(U W), where dim denotes the dimension of a
vector space.
6. A vectors space V is a direct sum of two vector spaces U and W (denoted by V = U W) if U W = . All
three spaces V , U and W are dened over the same eld F. Let V = R
3
and F = R. Is V = U W in the
following two cases?
(a) U is the xy plane and W is the yz plane.
(b) U is the xy plane and W is the z axis.