Ifis a complex valued function on the complex plane and
has an essential singularity at a point
then as
approaches
strange things start to happen.
starts to change wildly, approaching arbitrarily close every point in the complex plane. More precisely,
The Casorati Weierstrass Theorem
Suppose that a complex functionhas an essential singularity at
Let
be any complex number and let
and
be positive real numbers. There exists
such that
and
Proof
Assume the theorem is false. Then there existsand positive real numbers
and
such that the function
is analytic on the punctured open disc
and the last line does not hold, so that
for
Sincefor
the function
is analytic. Moreover,
for
and sohas a removable singularity at
so by defining
appropriately, we can make
analytic on
Nowfor
and so
for
Ifthen
would have a removable singularity at
which could be removed by letting
If
then
for some positive integer
where
is analytic at
with
Thus
There is a stronger theorem called Picard's Theorem which states thattakes on all values in
except possible one, for