Thursday, 5 April 2012

set theory - solving f(f(x))=g(x)

This question is of course inspired by the question How to solve f(f(x))=cosx
and Joel David Hamkins' answer, which somehow gives a formal trick for solving equations of the form f(f(x))=g(x) on a bounded interval. [EDIT: actually he can do rather better than this, solving the equation away from a bounded interval (with positive measure)].



I've always found such questions ("solve f(f(x))=g(x)") rather vague because I always suspect that solutions are highly non-unique, but here are two precise questions which presumably are both very well-known:



Q1) Say g:mathbfRtomathbfR is an arbitrary function. Is there always a function f:mathbfRtomathbfR such that f(f(x))=g(x) for all xinmathbfR?



Q2) If g is as above but also assumed continuous, is there always a continuous f as above?



The reason I'm asking is that these questions are surely standard, and perhaps even easy, but I feel like I know essentially nothing about them. Apologies in advance if there is a well-known counterexample to everything. Of course Q1 has nothing to do with the real numbers; there is a version of Q1 for every cardinal and it's really a question in combinatorics.



EDIT: Sergei Ivanov has answered both of these questions, and Gabriel Benamy has raised another, which I shall append to this one because I only asked it under an hour ago:



Q3) if g is now a continuous function mathbfCtomathbfC, is there always continuous f with f(f(x))=g(x) for all xinmathbfC?



EDIT: in the comments under his answer Sergei does this one too, and even gives an example of a continuous g for which no f, continuous or not, can exist.



Related MO questions: f(f(x))=exp(x) and other functions just in the middle between linear and exponential, and Does the exponential function has a square root.

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