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How do you show that a doubly-periodic continuous function $f:\Bbb C→\Bbb C$ is bounded?

Mike Pierce
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J.doe
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1 Answers1

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The result is not true unless you mean doubly-periodic instead of periodic.

If that is what you mean, then here is a hint:

  1. A continuous function on a compact subset of $\mathbb{C}$ is bounded (and attains its minimum and maximum).

  2. The values of a doubly-periodic function are all equal to the values on some initial parallelogram containing the origin.

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    The question says nothing about doubly-periodic functions. – mrf Aug 31 '16 at 07:42
  • @mrf But the result is not true without the doubly-periodic assumption. Even $z \mapsto e^z$ will be a counterexample. – Caleb Stanford Aug 31 '16 at 07:49
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    Of course it's not true, but it's just as likely that the OP has misunderstood this (after all, it's true for $\mathbb{R}$) as that (s)he mistook periodic and doubly periodic. Surely, it's better to wait for clarification from the only one who actually knows what they want to ask. – mrf Aug 31 '16 at 07:52
  • I don't understand the part 2 of the answer. Would you explain it a little more? Thanks! – J.doe Sep 01 '16 at 21:47
  • @J.doe let's say the two periods are x and y. Just thinking of them as vectors, all complex numbers z can be written as ax+by for a and b real numbers. Then subtract or add x and y until you get a'x + b'y where a', b' are between 0 and 1. The value of the function is the same since subtracting x or y didn't affect it. The set of z such that z = a'x + b'y and a', b' are between 0 and 1 is a parallelogram. – Caleb Stanford Sep 01 '16 at 21:56
  • Why do we need them to be between 0 and 1? – J.doe Sep 01 '16 at 22:01
  • @J.doe so we get a compact set. – Caleb Stanford Sep 01 '16 at 22:01
  • So 0 and 1 are just some random numbers right? We just need them to be bounded. – J.doe Sep 01 '16 at 22:04
  • @J.doe Yeah! That's right. Of course, you can only subtract or add an integer number of $x$s and $y$s, so you can't get it between $0$ and $\frac12$, for example. But instead of between $0$ or $1$, you could get between $-10$ and $10$ or something. – Caleb Stanford Sep 01 '16 at 22:30
  • Thanks a lot! Really appreciate it!!! – J.doe Sep 02 '16 at 03:02
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    @J.doe You're welcome :) – Caleb Stanford Sep 02 '16 at 03:04