A characterization of continuous associative operations whose graphs are ruled surfaces (Q579542)

The authors characterize a class of continuous associative binary operations. The characterization is reduced to solving the following functional equation for f: [0,\(\infty)\to [0,\infty):\) \(f^{- 1}(f(x)/f(x+y))+f^{-1}(f(y)/f(x+y))=1,\) \(x+y>0\), whose strictly increasing solutions are determined and are of the form \(f(x)=x^ c\), \(c>0\).