A Functional Equation for the Cosine

Abstract

It is known [3], [5] that, the complex-valued solutions of(B)(apart from the trivial solution f(x)≡0) are of the form(C)(D)In case f is a measurable solution of (B), then f is continuous [2], [3] and the corresponding ϕ in (C) is also continuous and ϕ is of the form [1],(E)In this paper, the functional equation(P)where f is a complex-valued, measurable function of the real variable and A≠0 is a real constant, is considered. It is shown that f is continuous and that (apart from the trivial solutions f ≡ 0, 1), the only functions which satisfy (P) are the cosine functions cos ax and - cos bx, where a and b belong to a denumerable set of real numbers.