Solution

ID: past-exam-of-the-differential-equations-1-course-of-the-university-of-oxford/2023/1/b/iii/solution

The difference of two successive Picard iterates factors as
The preceding bound and the kernel estimate therefore give
Moreover . Summing the resulting geometric series, for ,
Thus there is a uniform limit on , continuous by the uniform limit theorem, with . The integral passes to this limit because
Therefore satisfies the Volterra integral equation, and hence the initial value problem. This proves global existence by Global Picard iteration with a decaying kernel. The same estimate gives the useful error bound
If , every iterate is zero and the convergence assertion is immediate.

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