Generalized characteristic equation of branching information measures (Q1120760)

The problem of determining all branching measures of inset information on open domains leads to the functional equation \[ (*)\quad \phi_ 1(p,q)+\phi_ 2(p+q,r)=\phi_ 3(p,r)+\phi_ 4(p+r,q) \] for \((p,q,r)\) in \(D_ 3\) and real-valued maps \(\phi_ 1\) \((i=1,...,4)\) on \(D_ 2\). Here, we let \(J=]0,1[^ m\) for some (fixed) positive integer m, and \(D_ n=\{(p_ 1,p_ 2,...,p_ n)|\) \(p_ i\in J\) for all i, \(\sum^{n}_{i=1}p_ i\in J\}\) for \(n=2,3,..\). The main result of the paper is the general solution of equation (*). The general soluton of (*) in the special case when the four unknown functions are equal and symmetric follows from a paper of \textit{C. T. Ng} [Inform. and Control 25, 45-56 (1974; Zbl 0279.94018)]. The reduction of (*) to this special case is not easy, however, because of the absence of zeros from the domain. The first step is the known reduction of (*) to the two equations \[ (A)\quad h(p,q)+k(p+q,r)= h(p,r)+k(p+r,q),\quad f(p,q)+g(p+q,r)+ f(p,r)+g(p+r,q)=0, \] for \((p,q,r)\in D_ 3\) and real- valued maps \(f,g,h,k\) on \(D_ 2\). Equation (A) is eventually reduced to the special case with which Ng dealt. Some new methods developed include the general solution of some Sincov-type equations on restricted domains, and the general solution of \(1/2 U(x,y)=\Phi(x+y,q)-\Phi(x,q)-\Phi(y,q)- m(q)\) for \((x,y,q)\in D_ 3\) and real-valued maps m (on J), U (on \(D_ 2)\), and skew-symmetric \(\Phi\) (on \(D_ 2)\).