English

Hyperreal differentiation with an idempotent ultrafilter

Logic 2024-11-25 v1

Abstract

In the hyperreals constructed using a free ultrafilter on R, where [f] is the hyperreal represented by f:R->R, it is tempting to define a derivative operator by [f]'=[f'], but unfortunately this is not generally well-defined. We show that if the ultrafilter in question is idempotent and contains (0,epsilon) for arbitrarily small real epsilon then the desired derivative operator is well-defined for all f such that [f'] exists. We also introduce a hyperreal variation of the derivative from finite calculus, and show that it has surprising relationships to the standard derivative. We give an alternate proof, and strengthened version of, Hindman's theorem.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2411.14689,
  title  = {Hyperreal differentiation with an idempotent ultrafilter},
  author = {Samuel Allen Alexander and Bryan Dawson},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2411.14689},
  year   = {2024}
}

Comments

17 pages. Accepted to the Journal of Logic and Analysis

R2 v1 2026-06-28T20:08:38.048Z