GATE MA syllabus 2026

• Functions of two or more variables, continuity, directional derivatives, partial derivatives, total derivative, maxima and minima, saddle point, method of Lagrange’s multipliers
• double and triple integrals and their applications to area, volume and surface area
• vector calculus: gradient, divergence and curl, line integrals and surface integrals, Green’s theorem, Stoke’s theorem, and Gauss divergence theorem.

• Finite dimensional vector spaces over real or complex fields
• linear transformations and their matrix representations, rank and nullity
• systems of linear equations, characteristic polynomial, eigenvalues and eigenvectors, diagonalization, minimal polynomial, Cayley-Hamilton theorem
• finite dimensional inner product spaces, Gram-Schmidt orthonormalization process, symmetric, skew-symmetric, Hermitian, skew-Hermitian, normal, orthogonal and unitary matrices
• diagonalization by a unitary matrix, Jordan canonical form
• bilinear and quadratic forms.

• Metric spaces, connectedness, compactness, completeness
• sequences and series of functions, uniform convergence, Ascoli-Arzela theorem, Weierstrass approximation theorem, contraction mapping principle
• power series
• differentiation of functions of several variables, inverse and implicit function theorems
• Lebesgue measure on the real line, measurable functions
• Lebesgue integral, Fatou’s lemma, monotone convergence theorem, dominated convergence theorem.

• Functions of a complex variable: continuity, differentiability, analytic functions, harmonic functions
• complex integration: Cauchy’s integral theorem and formula, Liouville’s theorem, maximum modulus principle, Morera’s theorem
• zeros and singularities
• power series, radius of convergence, Taylor’s series and Laurent’s series
• residue theorem and applications for evaluating real integrals
• Rouche’s theorem, argument principle, Schwarz lemma
• conformal mappings, Mobius transformations.

• First order ordinary differential equations, existence and uniqueness theorems for initial value problems, linear ordinary differential equations of higher order with constant coefficients
• second order linear ordinary differential equations with variable coefficients
• Cauchy-Euler equation, method of Laplace transforms for solving ordinary differential equations, series solutions (power series, Frobenius method)
• Legendre and Bessel functions and their orthogonal properties
• systems of linear first order ordinary differential equations, Sturm's oscillation and separation theorems, Sturm-Liouville eigenvalue problems, planar autonomous systems of ordinary differential equations: stability of stationary points for linear systems with constant coefficients, linearized stability, Lyapunov functions.

• Groups, subgroups, normal subgroups, quotient groups, homomorphisms, automorphisms
• cyclic groups, permutation groups, group action, Sylow’s theorems and their applications
• rings, ideals, prime and maximal ideals, quotient rings, unique factorization domains, principal ideal domains, Euclidean domains, polynomial rings, Eisenstein’s irreducibility criterion
• fields, finite fields, field extensions, algebraic extensions, algebraically closed fields.

• Normed linear spaces, Banach spaces, Hahn-Banach theorem, open mapping and closed graph theorems, principle of uniform boundedness
• inner-product spaces, Hilbert spaces, orthonormal bases, projection theorem, Riesz representation theorem, spectral theorem for compact self-adjoint operators.

• Systems of linear equations: direct methods (Gaussian elimination, LU decomposition, Cholesky factorization), iterative methods (Gauss-Seidel and Jacobi) and their convergence for diagonally dominant coefficient matrices
• numerical solutions of nonlinear equations: bisection method, secant method, Newton-Raphson method, fixed point iteration
• interpolation: Lagrange and Newton forms of interpolating polynomial, error in polynomial interpolation of a function
• numerical differentiation and error, numerical integration: trapezoidal and Simpson rules, Newton-Cotes integration formulas, composite rules, mathematical errors involved in numerical integration formula
• numerical solution of initial value problems for ordinary differential equations: methods of Euler, Runge-Kutta method of order 2.

• Method of characteristics for first order linear and quasilinear partial differential equations
• second order partial differential equations in two independent variables: classification and canonical forms, method of separation of variables for Laplace equation in Cartesian and polar coordinates, heat and wave equations in one space variable
• wave equation: Cauchy problem and d’Alembert formula, domains of dependence and influence, non-homogeneous wave equation
• heat equation: Cauchy problem
• Laplace and Fourier transform methods.

Basic concepts of topology, bases, subbases, subspace topology, order topology, product topology, quotient topology, metric topology, connectedness, compactness, countability and separation axioms, Urysohn’s Lemma.

• Linear programming models, convex sets, extreme points
• basic feasible solution, graphical method, simplex method, two phase methods, revised simplex method
• infeasible and unbounded linear programming models, alternate optima
• duality theory, weak duality and strong duality
• balanced and unbalanced transportation problems, initial basic feasible solution of balanced transportation problems (least cost method, north-west corner rule, Vogel’s approximation method)
• optimal solution, modified distribution method
• solving assignment problems, Hungarian method.

Tenses, articles, adjectives, prepositions, conjunctions, verb-noun agreement, and other parts of speech.

Words, idioms, and phrases in context.

Data graphs (bar graphs, pie charts, and other graphs representing data), 2- and 3-dimensional plots, maps, and tables.

Ratios, percentages, powers, exponents and logarithms, permutations and combinations, and series. Mensuration and geometry. Elementary statistics and probability.

Deduction and induction, analogy, numerical relations and reasoning.

• Translation, rotation, scaling, mirroring, assembling, and grouping
• paper folding, cutting, and patterns in 2 and 3 dimensions.