Can the (point-wise) multiplication of two discrete band-limited functions be inherently aliased? I'm not fully used to the language of DSP, so forgive me if I confuse some of the notation, or if the below is trivial. 

I'm interested in the case where we want to do the point-wise multiplication of two discrete signals, $f[x_n]=g[x_n]h[x_n]$ for $n=0,\dots,M-1$. This is easy enough to do in the computer. However, I'll take a detour and formulate the problem in the (Discrete) Fourier domain, where the multiplication becomes a convolution:
$$
\widehat{f}[k_n] = \sum_{j=-M}^M \widehat{g}[k_j]\widehat{h}[k_n-k_j].
$$
Interesting is that (just like the MATLAB conv command) we get $2M-1$ outputs; i.e., the convolved signal is inherently longer than the original signal. If we take the result back to the sample domain, we have to throw away $M$ samples to get back to the original domain (or get back to sample domain and pick every second entry).

I ran the following test in MATLAB that seems to confirm my thought,

M=100;
x=[0:M-1];
g=sin(x/M*6*pi);
h=cos(x/M*6*pi);
f=g.*h;

ff = fft(f);gf = fft(g);hf = fft(h);
v  = ifftshift( (-1/2:1/M:1/2-1/M) + mod(M,2)/(2*M) ); % Normalized frequencies

figure(1); plot( x, g, x, h, x, f )
title('Discrete multiplication')
legend('g','h','f')

figure(2); plot( v, abs(gf), v, abs(hf), v, abs(ff) )
title('Spectrum')


This generates the following two figures:


and



that appears to confirm my thoughts. The spectrum of $f[x_n]$ (in yellow) is broader than the spectrum of either input signals. Then to get to the question in the title: (1) is it possible that the point-wise multiplication of two discrete, band-limited functions is aliased itself? And (2) although I was able to recreate the $f$ also using the convolution theorem using



ghf = conv( fftshift(gf), fftshift(hf)./M, 'same' ); 
gh  = ifft(ifftshift(ghf),'symmetric'); % = identical to the vector 'f'


would it be possible to circumvent the aliasing by outputing the 'full' convolution, thereby getting $2M-1$ samples back, rather than $M$ samples?
(1) is it possible that the point-wise multiplication of two discrete, band-limited functions is aliased itself?


Yes.  Or at least it's possible that the result won't fit in a tidy manner into your sampling rate.  Because multiplying two signals together creates energy at different frequencies than the frequencies of the original (this is easiest to do by a single-frequency example: $2 \cos \omega_1 t \cdot \cos \omega_2 t = \cos (\omega_1 - \omega_2)t + \cos(\omega_1 + \omega_2)t$.  If that $\omega_1 + \omega_2$ is to great to fit into your sampling rate, then it'll alias.


  (2) would it be possible to circumvent the aliasing by outputing the 'full' convolution, thereby getting $2−1$ samples back?


Yes and no.  Yes, you could, but to be consistent the result would have to be at a sample rate $\frac{2M - 1}{M}$ times the original.

An equivalent operation would be to upsample both signals by a factor of two and then multiply -- if the upsampling were done in a way that results in correctly band limited signals, once you multiplied them they would fit into the new, bigger bandwidth made available to them by upsampling.