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Let $f:\mathbb{R}\rightarrow \mathbb{R}$ be a function such that $$f\big(f(x)\big)=\big(f(x)+1\big)x$$ for all real $x$, $f(-1)=0$ and $f(0)=-1$.

Find all such functions $f$.

John
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2 Answers2

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Let $f:\mathbb{R}\rightarrow \mathbb{R}$ be a function such that

$f(f(x))=(f(x)+1)x$ for all real $x$ and $f(-1)=0$ ; $f(0)=-1$


Solution:
First we prove that $ f $ is injective everywhere where $ f(x) \neq -1 $:

Assume: $ f(a)=f(b) \implies (f(a)+1)a = f(f(a)) = f(f(b)) = (f(b)+1)b = (f(a)+1)b \implies a=b \lor f(a)=f(b)=-1 \implies $

$ f(x) $ is injective everywhere where $ f(x) \neq -1 $.

The simplest solution is:

$$ x \in \mathbb{R}\backslash \{-1\} : f(x)=-1 \\ x=-1 : f(x)=0 \tag{1} $$


Update 01/16/2017:
The question was to find all such functions.
Certainly $(1)$ is not the only solution. There are infinitely many others. But I don't think it's possible to describe all solutions systematically for two reasons:
A) There are no continuity requirements. Therefore the values for $ f(x) $ can be more or less arbitrarily chosen for specific values of $ x $.
B) The functional equation given above does not connect values with other regions of the domain continuously.

As an example:
Choose $ f(1)=2 $. This implies that $ f(f(1)) = f(2) = 3 , f(3) = 8 , f(8)=27 $ etc.
A solution obtained this way becomes:

$$ x \in \mathbb{R}\backslash \{-1,1,2,3,8,27,....\} : f(x)=-1 \\ x =-1 : f(x)=0\\ x =1 : f(x)=2\\ x =2 : f(x)=3\\ etc. \enspace etc. $$

Of course we can choose many more of these 'isolated' sequences , combine them and 'integrate' them in the 'base' solution $ (1) $.
The only thing we need to check when combining different sequences is that the function stays single-valued and injective.

Rutger Moody
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If that helps:

Let $x_n$ denote the $n^{th}$ iterate of the function $f$. We have the recurrence

$$x_0=x,\\x_{n+2}=(x_{n+1}+1)x_n.$$

For large $x_{n+1}$ we can neglect the term $+1$ and, taking the logarithm, we get a Fibonacci-like recurrence:

$$\log x_{n+2}=\log x_{n+1}+\log x_n.$$

Hence the iterates are asymptotic to $a^{F_n}$ for some $a$ and

$$f(x)\to x^\phi.$$

  • It would also be nice if it's possible to obtain a closed form solution to the nonlinear recursion $x_{n+2}=(x_{n+1}+1)x_n$, but I understand these recursions are very difficult (though this one looks like the simplest of them all). Would you know if there are solutions known? With that we could describe also continuous parts of the function. For example $ \langle -\infty , -1 \rangle $ and $ \langle 0, \infty \rangle $ could be continuous. – Rutger Moody Jan 17 '17 at 22:32