In
mathematics
Mathematics is a field of study that discovers and organizes methods, Mathematical theory, theories and theorems that are developed and Mathematical proof, proved for the needs of empirical sciences and mathematics itself. There are many ar ...
, the inverse function theorem is a
theorem
In mathematics and formal logic, a theorem is a statement (logic), statement that has been Mathematical proof, proven, or can be proven. The ''proof'' of a theorem is a logical argument that uses the inference rules of a deductive system to esta ...
that asserts that, if a
real function
In mathematical analysis, and applications in geometry, applied mathematics, engineering, and natural sciences, a function of a real variable is a function whose domain is the real numbers \mathbb, or a subset of \mathbb that contains an inter ...
''f'' has a
continuous derivative near a point where its derivative is nonzero, then, near this point, ''f'' has an
inverse function
In mathematics, the inverse function of a function (also called the inverse of ) is a function that undoes the operation of . The inverse of exists if and only if is bijective, and if it exists, is denoted by f^ .
For a function f\colon ...
. The inverse function is also
differentiable
In mathematics, a differentiable function of one real variable is a function whose derivative exists at each point in its domain. In other words, the graph of a differentiable function has a non- vertical tangent line at each interior point in ...
, and the ''
inverse function rule'' expresses its derivative as the
multiplicative inverse
In mathematics, a multiplicative inverse or reciprocal for a number ''x'', denoted by 1/''x'' or ''x''−1, is a number which when Multiplication, multiplied by ''x'' yields the multiplicative identity, 1. The multiplicative inverse of a ra ...
of the derivative of ''f''.
The theorem applies verbatim to
complex-valued functions of a
complex variable. It generalizes to functions from
''n''-
tuples
In mathematics, a tuple is a finite sequence or ''ordered list'' of numbers or, more generally, mathematical objects, which are called the ''elements'' of the tuple. An -tuple is a tuple of elements, where is a non-negative integer. There is on ...
(of real or complex numbers) to ''n''-tuples, and to functions between
vector space
In mathematics and physics, a vector space (also called a linear space) is a set (mathematics), set whose elements, often called vector (mathematics and physics), ''vectors'', can be added together and multiplied ("scaled") by numbers called sc ...
s of the same finite dimension, by replacing "derivative" with "
Jacobian matrix
In vector calculus, the Jacobian matrix (, ) of a vector-valued function of several variables is the matrix of all its first-order partial derivatives. If this matrix is square, that is, if the number of variables equals the number of component ...
" and "nonzero derivative" with "nonzero
Jacobian determinant".
If the function of the theorem belongs to a higher
differentiability class, the same is true for the inverse function. There are also versions of the inverse function theorem for
holomorphic function
In mathematics, a holomorphic function is a complex-valued function of one or more complex variables that is complex differentiable in a neighbourhood of each point in a domain in complex coordinate space . The existence of a complex de ...
s, for differentiable maps between
manifold
In mathematics, a manifold is a topological space that locally resembles Euclidean space near each point. More precisely, an n-dimensional manifold, or ''n-manifold'' for short, is a topological space with the property that each point has a N ...
s, for differentiable functions between
Banach space
In mathematics, more specifically in functional analysis, a Banach space (, ) is a complete normed vector space. Thus, a Banach space is a vector space with a metric that allows the computation of vector length and distance between vectors and ...
s, and so forth.
The theorem was first established by
Picard and
Goursat using an iterative scheme: the basic idea is to prove a
fixed point theorem using the
contraction mapping theorem.
Statements
For functions of a single
variable, the theorem states that if
is a
continuously differentiable function with nonzero derivative at the point
; then
is injective (or bijective onto the image) in a neighborhood of
, the inverse is continuously differentiable near
, and the derivative of the inverse function at
is the reciprocal of the derivative of
at
:
It can happen that a function
may be injective near a point
while
. An example is
. In fact, for such a function, the inverse cannot be differentiable at
, since if
were differentiable at
, then, by the chain rule,
, which implies
. (The situation is different for holomorphic functions; see
#Holomorphic inverse function theorem below.)
For functions of more than one variable, the theorem states that if
is a continuously differentiable function from an open subset
of
into
, and the
derivative
In mathematics, the derivative is a fundamental tool that quantifies the sensitivity to change of a function's output with respect to its input. The derivative of a function of a single variable at a chosen input value, when it exists, is t ...
is invertible at a point (that is, the determinant of the
Jacobian matrix
In vector calculus, the Jacobian matrix (, ) of a vector-valued function of several variables is the matrix of all its first-order partial derivatives. If this matrix is square, that is, if the number of variables equals the number of component ...
of at is non-zero), then there exist neighborhoods
of
in
and
of
such that
and
is bijective.
[Theorem 1.1.7. in ] Writing
, this means that the system of equations
has a unique solution for
in terms of
when
. Note that the theorem ''does not'' say
is bijective onto the image where
is invertible but that it is locally bijective where
is invertible.
Moreover, the theorem says that the inverse function
is continuously differentiable, and its derivative at
is the inverse map of
; i.e.,
:
In other words, if
are the Jacobian matrices representing
, this means:
:
The hard part of the theorem is the existence and differentiability of
. Assuming this, the inverse derivative formula follows from the
chain rule
In calculus, the chain rule is a formula that expresses the derivative of the Function composition, composition of two differentiable functions and in terms of the derivatives of and . More precisely, if h=f\circ g is the function such that h ...
applied to
. (Indeed,
) Since taking the inverse is infinitely differentiable, the formula for the derivative of the inverse shows that if
is continuously
times differentiable, with invertible derivative at the point , then the inverse is also continuously
times differentiable. Here
is a positive integer or
.
There are two variants of the inverse function theorem.
Given a continuously differentiable map
, the first is
*The derivative
is surjective (i.e., the Jacobian matrix representing it has rank
) if and only if there exists a continuously differentiable function
on a neighborhood
of
such that
near
,
and the second is
*The derivative
is injective if and only if there exists a continuously differentiable function
on a neighborhood
of
such that
near
.
In the first case (when
is surjective), the point
is called a
regular value. Since
, the first case is equivalent to saying
is not in the image of
critical points (a critical point is a point
such that the kernel of
is nonzero). The statement in the first case is a special case of the
submersion theorem.
These variants are restatements of the inverse functions theorem. Indeed, in the first case when
is surjective, we can find an (injective) linear map
such that
. Define
so that we have:
:
Thus, by the inverse function theorem,
has inverse near
; i.e.,
near
. The second case (
is injective) is seen in the similar way.
Example
Consider the
vector-valued function
A vector-valued function, also referred to as a vector function, is a mathematical function of one or more variables whose range is a set of multidimensional vectors or infinite-dimensional vectors. The input of a vector-valued function could ...
defined by:
:
The Jacobian matrix of it at
is:
:
with the determinant:
:
The determinant
is nonzero everywhere. Thus the theorem guarantees that, for every point in
, there exists a neighborhood about over which is invertible. This does not mean is invertible over its entire domain: in this case is not even
injective
In mathematics, an injective function (also known as injection, or one-to-one function ) is a function that maps distinct elements of its domain to distinct elements of its codomain; that is, implies (equivalently by contraposition, impl ...
since it is periodic:
.
Counter-example

If one drops the assumption that the derivative is continuous, the function no longer need be invertible. For example
and
has discontinuous derivative
and
, which vanishes arbitrarily close to
. These critical points are local max/min points of
, so
is not one-to-one (and not invertible) on any interval containing
. Intuitively, the slope
does not propagate to nearby points, where the slopes are governed by a weak but rapid oscillation.
Methods of proof
As an important result, the inverse function theorem has been given numerous proofs. The proof most commonly seen in textbooks relies on the
contraction mapping principle, also known as the
Banach fixed-point theorem
In mathematics, the Banach fixed-point theorem (also known as the contraction mapping theorem or contractive mapping theorem or Banach–Caccioppoli theorem) is an important tool in the theory of metric spaces; it guarantees the existence and uniqu ...
(which can also be used as the key step in the proof of
existence and uniqueness of solutions to
ordinary differential equations
In mathematics, an ordinary differential equation (ODE) is a differential equation (DE) dependent on only a single independent variable. As with any other DE, its unknown(s) consists of one (or more) function(s) and involves the derivatives ...
).
Since the fixed point theorem applies in infinite-dimensional (Banach space) settings, this proof generalizes immediately to the infinite-dimensional version of the inverse function theorem (see
Generalizations
A generalization is a form of abstraction whereby common properties of specific instances are formulated as general concepts or claims. Generalizations posit the existence of a domain or set of elements, as well as one or more common character ...
below).
An alternate proof in finite dimensions hinges on the
extreme value theorem
In calculus, the extreme value theorem states that if a real-valued function f is continuous on the closed and bounded interval ,b/math>, then f must attain a maximum and a minimum, each at least once.
That is, there exist numbers c and ...
for functions on a
compact set
In mathematics, specifically general topology, compactness is a property that seeks to generalize the notion of a closed and bounded subset of Euclidean space. The idea is that a compact space has no "punctures" or "missing endpoints", i.e., i ...
.
This approach has an advantage that the proof generalizes to a situation where there is no Cauchy completeness (see ).
Yet another proof uses
Newton's method
In numerical analysis, the Newton–Raphson method, also known simply as Newton's method, named after Isaac Newton and Joseph Raphson, is a root-finding algorithm which produces successively better approximations to the roots (or zeroes) of a ...
, which has the advantage of providing an
effective version of the theorem: bounds on the derivative of the function imply an estimate of the size of the neighborhood on which the function is invertible.
Proof for single-variable functions
We want to prove the following: ''Let
be an open set with
a continuously differentiable function defined on
, and suppose that
. Then there exists an open interval
with
such that
maps
bijectively onto the open interval
, and such that the inverse function
is continuously differentiable, and for any
, if
is such that
, then
.''
We may without loss of generality assume that
. Given that
is an open set and
is continuous at
, there exists
such that
and
In particular,
This shows that
is strictly increasing for all
. Let
be such that
. Then
. By the intermediate value theorem, we find that
maps the interval