A note on classical and \(p\)-adic Fréchet functional equations with restrictions (Q1936952)

Let \(X\), \(Y\) be two \(\mathbb Q\)-vector spaces and let \(f:X \to Y\). The function \(f\) is said to satisfy the Fréchet functional equation of order \(s-1\) if \[ \Delta_{h_1,h_2,\dots,h_s}f(x)=0 \quad (x,h_1,h_2,\dots,h_s \in X), \tag{F} \] where \(\Delta_hf(x)=f(x+h)-f(x)\) and \(\Delta_{h_1,h_2,\dots,h_s}f(x)=\Delta_{h_1}(\Delta_{h_2,\dots,h_s}f)(x)\), \(s=2,\dots\). The solutions of this equation are usually named ``polynomials''. The general solution of (F) has the form \[ f(x)=A_0+A_1(x)+\dots+A_s(x), \] where \(A_0\) is a constant and \(A_k(x)=A^k(x,\dots,x)\) for a certain \(k\)-additive function \(A^k:X^k \to Y\). The paper under review investigates equation (F) on restricted domains. One of the results, when \(X=\mathbb R\), is the following. Theorem: Assume that \(I_k=(a_k,b_k)\) are nonempty open intervals of the real line, \(k=1,2,\dots,s\). If \(\Delta_{h_1,h_2,\dots,h_s}f(x)=0\) for all \(x \in \mathbb R\) and \(h_k \in I_k\), \(k=1,2,\dots,s\), then \(\Delta_{h_1,h_2,\dots,h_s}f(x)=0\) for all \((x,h_1,h_2,\dots,h_s) \in \mathbb R^{S+1}\). An analogous result is proved when \(X=\mathbb Q_p\), the field of \(p\)-adic numbers.