English

Solvability of meromorphic equations in elementary functions

Group Theory 2026-02-11 v1 Complex Variables

Abstract

An equation f(x)=af(x)=a, where ff is a complex meromorphic function and aCa\in\mathbb{C} is a parameter, is solvable in elementary functions if the inverse map x=f1(a)x=f^{-1}(a) can be expressed as a finite composition of arithmetic operations (addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division), the exponential function, the complex logarithm, and constants. Specific functions such as tanxx\tan x - x, expx+x\exp x + x, xxx^x have been proven to be unsolvable by Kanel-Belov, Malistov, Zaytsev, while almost all entire surjective functions of at most exponential growth have been covered by Zelenko. All these rely on one-dimensional topological Galois theory, developed by Khovanskii. We generalize to provide a proof for the unsolvability of all elementary meromorphic functions ff such that the derivative of ff has infinitely many roots xix_i and the set of distinct values f(xi)f(x_i) is infinite.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2602.09253,
  title  = {Solvability of meromorphic equations in elementary functions},
  author = {Miroslav Marinov and Nikola Veselinov},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2602.09253},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

9 pages

R2 v1 2026-07-01T10:28:54.212Z