# Limit involving infinity

Alright, so I had a midterm today where I had to evaluate the following limit:

$$\lim_{x\to\infty}\left(1+\frac{1}{x}\right)^{x^2}$$

It looks eerily similar to the limit case yielding $e$ but I couldn't find a way to utilize that, so I took this approach:

$$\lim_{x\to\infty}e^{\ln\left(\frac{x+1}{x}\right)^{x^2}}$$

Which simplified to this using log properties:

$$\lim_{x\to\infty}\frac{(x+1)^{x^2}}{x^{x^2}}$$

However, once I get here I get a bit stuck. Would using L'Hopital's via natural logarithmic differentiation of both the numerator and denominator be an advisable next step, or is this approach ultimately fruitless altogether?

• Decompose $x^2=x\cdot x$ and try to obtain the limit for $e$ – zar Oct 20 '16 at 22:57

For any $k>1$, it is easy to se that for $x>k$, $$\left( 1+\frac1{x} \right)^{x^2} > \left( 1+\frac1{x} \right)^{kx} =\left( \left( 1+\frac1{x} \right)^{x} \right)^k$$ so $$\lim_{x\to\infty}\left( 1+\frac1{x} \right)^{x^2} > \left(\lim_{x\to\infty} \left( 1+\frac1{x} \right)^{x} \right)^k = e^k$$ and since this applies for any value of $k >1$, $$\lim_{x\to\infty}\left( 1+\frac1{x} \right)^{x^2} \to \infty$$

You should have been taking the limit:

$$\lim_{x\rightarrow \infty} x^2\ln\left(\frac{x + 1}{x}\right)$$

Since that gives $\infty \cdot 0$, it's indeterminant, but you need to change it--the easiest way is to put the $x^2$ in the denominator:

$$\frac{\ln\left(\frac{x + 1}{x}\right)}{\frac{1}{x^2}}$$

Now you have a proper form for L'Hôpital's rule: $\frac{0}{0}$:

\begin{align} \lim_{x\rightarrow \infty}\frac{\ln\left(\frac{x + 1}{x}\right)}{\frac{1} {x^2}} =&\ \lim_{x\rightarrow \infty} \frac{-\frac{\frac{1}{x^2}}{\frac{x+1}{x}}}{-\frac{2}{x^3}} \\ =&\ \lim_{x\rightarrow \infty}\frac{\frac{1}{x(x+1)}}{\frac{2}{x^3}} \\ =&\ \lim_{x\rightarrow \infty}\frac{x^2}{2(x+1)} \end{align}

Since the numerator's degree is higher than the denominator's, this limit diverges, thus the original limit goes to $e^\infty$ which diverges.

Since $f(t)=\frac{1}{t}$ is positive and decreasing on $\mathbb{R}^+$, $$x^2\log\left(1+\frac{1}{x}\right)= x^2\int_{x}^{x+1}\frac{dt}{t}\geq \frac{x^2}{x+1}$$ so $$\left(1+\frac{1}{x}\right)^{x^2}\geq \exp\left(\frac{x^2}{x+1}\right)\geq e^{x-1}$$ and the limit as $x\to +\infty$ is straightforward to compute by comparison.

If $a>0$ and $n$ is a positive integer, then $(1+a)^n \ge 1+na.$ This is easy to prove by induction. Therefore $(1+1/n)^{n^2} \ge 1 + n^2/n = 1 + n.$ Thus $(1+1/n)^{n^2} \to \infty.$ It's a short walk from here to obtain $(1+1/x)^{x^2} \to \infty$ as $x\to \infty$ through real values.
