proof of Morera’s theorem
We provide a proof of Morera’s theoremunder the hypothesis
thatfor any circuit
contained in .This is apparently more restrictive, but actually equivalent
,to supposingfor any triangle
,provided that is continuous
in .
The idea is to prove that has an antiderivative in .Then , being holomorphic in ,will have derivatives of any order in ;but for all , , .
First, suppose is connected.Then , being open, is also pathwise connected.
Fix .For any define as
(1) |
where is a path entirely contained in with initial point and final point .
The function is well defined.In fact, let and be any two paths entirely contained in with initial point and final point ;define a circuit by joining and ,the path obtained from by“reversing the parameter direction”.Then by linearity and additivity of integral
(2) |
but the left-hand side is 0 by hypothesis,thus the two integrals on the right-hand side are equal.
We must now prove that in .Given , there exists such that the ball of radius centered in is contained in .Suppose :then we can choose as a path from to the segment parameterized by .Write with :by additivity of integral and the mean value theorem,
for some .Since is continuous, so are and , and
In the general case, we just repeat the procedureonce for each connected component of .