If we have a single-variable function f:R→R it is quite clear what it means when we say f is Ck (or of class Ck), k∈Z,k≥0:
- when k≥1 that means all the derivatives of f up to the k-th one exist, and in addition to that f(k) is continuous
- when k=0 that means simply that f is continuous
Now suppose we have the multi-variable function f:Rm→R
Here m∈N and m≥2.
In that case what does it mean when we say that f is of class Ck, k∈Z,k≥0?
I met this concept on page 145 of the Vector Calculus book by Baxandall and Liebeck, and I realized that this concept is not quite clear to me. So I did some research on that, and it turned out this concept pertains to the partial derivatives of f.
The best definition that I found is the one given here.
So in the multi-variable case, it turns out that
- when we say f is of class Ck, k∈N, that means that all the partial derivatives of f of order s≤k exist and are continuous
- when we say f is of class C or C0, that means just that f is continuous
Finally, when the function f is of class C1, it is also called continuously differentiable.
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