On an equation of Sophie Germain (Q722471)

In one of her works, Sophie Germain mentioned the following identity \[ a^{4}+4b^{4}= \left((a+b)^{2}+b^{2}\right)\cdot \left((a-b)^{2}+b^{2}\right). \] To be more precise, she only mentioned the following ones \[ p^{2}+4= (p^{2}-2)^{2}+4p^{2} \] and \[ p^{4}+q^{4}=(p^{2}-q^{2})^{2}+2p^{2}q^{2}=\left(p^{2}+q^{2}\right)^{2}-2p^{2}q^{2}. \] Inspired by the very first identity, the authors consider the following functional equation \[ f (x)^{2} + 4f (y)^{2} = \left(f (x + y) + f (y)\right)\cdot \left( f (x - y) + f (y)\right) . \] It is immediately seen that the function \(f (x) = cx^{2}\) is a solution of this equation. The authors ask if there are any solutions of this equation other than \(f (x) = cx^{2}\). Since the above functional equation is investigated without any regularity conditions of the functions in question, the first guess is that the equation may be equivalent to the equation for a quadratic function: \[ f (x + y) + f (x- y) = 2f (x) + 2f (y). \] In this paper the authors show that only some solutions of the above quadratic functional equation satisfy the first functional equation. The main results of the paper can be found in Section 2. Here, the statements are proved. Henceforth let \((G, +)\) be an abelian group and \(R\) be an integral domain. Lemma 1. Let \(\mathrm{char}(R)\neq 2\). If a function \(f: G\to R\) satisfies equation \[ f (x)^{2} + 4f (y)^{2} = \left(f (x + y) + f (y)\right)\cdot \left( f (x- y) + f (y)\right) \] for all \(x, y\in G\), then \(f\) is even. Lemma 2. If \(f: G \to R\) satisfies \[ f (x)^{2} + 4f (y)^{2} = \left(f (x + y) + f (y)\right)\cdot \left( f (x- y) + f (y)\right) \] for all \(x, y \in G\) then \(f (2x) = 4f (x)\) for all \(x \in G\). Theorem 1. Let \(\mathrm{char}(R) \neq 2\). If \(f: G \to R\) satisfies \[ f (x)^{2} + 4f (y)^{2} = \left(f (x + y) + f (y)\right)\cdot \left( f (x- y) + f (y)\right) \] for all \(x, y \in G\) then it is quadratic. Theorem 2. Let \(\mathrm{char}(R) \neq 2\), \(f: G \to R\). Then \(f\) satisfies the functional equation \[ f (x)^{2} + 4f (y)^{2} = \left(f (x + y) + f (y)\right)\cdot \left( f (x- y) + f (y)\right) \] for all \(x, y \in G\), if and only if, there exists a unique biadditive and symmetric function \(A : G^{2} \to R\) satisfying \[ A(x, x)A(y, y) = A(x, y)^{2} \qquad \left(x, y \in G\right) \] and such that \(4f (x) = A(x, x)\) for all \(x\in G\). Theorem 3. Let \(R\) be a unique factorization domain with \(\mathrm{char}(R)\neq 2\). The function \(f: G \to R\) satisfies \[ f (x)^{2} + 4f (y)^{2} = \left(f (x + y) + f (y)\right)\cdot \left( f (x- y) + f (y)\right) \] for all \(x, y \in G\), if and only if, there exist an additive function \(a : G \to R\) and a constant \(\gamma \in R\) such that \(f = \gamma a^{2}\) .