You are here
Home ›Hurwitz's theorem
Primary tabs
Hurwitz’s theorem
Define the ball at of radius as and is the closed ball at of radius .
Theorem (Hurwitz).
Let be a region and suppose the sequence of holomorphic functions converges uniformly on compact subsets of to a holomorphic function . If is not identically zero, and for such that , then there exists an such that for all and have the same number of zeros in .
What this theorem says is that if you have a sequence of holomorphic functions which converge uniformly on compact subsets (such a sequence always converges to a holomorphic function but that’s another theorem altogether), the limit function is not identically zero and furthermore the limit function is not zero on the boundary of some ball, then eventually the functions of the sequence have the same number of zeros inside this ball as does the limit function.
Do note the requirement for not being identically zero. For example the sequence converges uniformly on compact subsets to , but have no zeros anywhere, while is identically zero.
Also in general this result holds for bounded convex subsets but it is most useful to state for balls.
An immediate consequence of this theorem is this useful corollary.
Corollary.
If is a region and a sequence of holomorphic functions converges uniformly on compact subsets of to a holomorphic function , and furthermore if never vanishes (is not zero for any point in ), then is either identically zero or also never vanishes.
References
- 1 John B. Conway. Functions of One Complex Variable I. Springer-Verlag, New York, New York, 1978.
Mathematics Subject Classification
30C15 Zeros of polynomials, rational functions, and other analytic functions (e.g. zeros of functions with bounded Dirichlet integral)- Forums
- Planetary Bugs
- HS/Secondary
- University/Tertiary
- Graduate/Advanced
- Industry/Practice
- Research Topics
- LaTeX help
- Math Comptetitions
- Math History
- Math Humor
- PlanetMath Comments
- PlanetMath System Updates and News
- PlanetMath help
- PlanetMath.ORG
- Strategic Communications Development
- The Math Pub
- Testing messages (ignore)
- Other useful stuff
Recent Activity
new question: pure subgroups by lvoyster
new correction: Typo in M\"obius function? by Aleph Zero
new collection: analytic number theory by Aleph Zero
May 20
new question: Taylor's Series Query! by unlord
new question: Laplace transform by J
new question: Residue Calculus by J
May 19
new Education: Project: PlanetMath Outlines Series by unlord
May 17
new image: sinx_approx.png by jeremyboden
new image: approximation_to_sinx by jeremyboden
new image: approximation_to_sinx by jeremyboden



Comments
Some remarks about this article
Hi there. I have some remarks.
First, the assumption that the function f be not identically zero is not necessary, as it follows from the assumption that f be nonzero on the boundary on the ball.
The assumption that G be a region (open connected set) is not necessary either, since all the action happens in a disk anyway. Ge geing open should be enough.
Thank you for the complex analysis articles. I copied a bunch of them to Wikipedia, including this one.
Oleg