A Celebration of Raoul Bott’s Legacy in Mathematics

Symposium soulignant l’héritage mathématique de Raoul Bott

June 9–13, 2008/9 au 13 juin 2008

Bott-Duffin Network Synthesis and Positive Real

Functions
John Hubbard
Department of Mathematics
Cornell University
Ithaca, NY 14853-7901
USA

jhh8@cornell.edu

Abstract
A passive 1-port is a box filled with various resistors, capacitors and
inductors, with two wires sticking out.
If you apply a current I(t) = eiωt , the response voltage across the port
will be V (t) = Z(ω)eiωt , where Z(ω) is called the impedance of the circuit.
It is fairly easy to see that Z is a rational function with real coefficients,
mapping the right half-plane to itself. Such functions are called prf s in
the literature.
The fundamental result of circuit theory, proved by Bott and Duffin,
asserts that every prf is the impedance of some 1-port. This is really a
result in complex analysis: the crucial ingredient is called Richardson’s
theorem in circuit theory, but is really Schwarz’s lemma in thin disguise.