Solution

ID: past-exam-of-the-differential-equations-2-course-of-the-university-of-oxford/2021/2/d/solution

Normalize both leading coefficients to one. For the indicial root , the recurrence relation from part (b) gives
Recognizing the Taylor series of the sine gives the first Frobenius solution
For the smaller indicial root , . The equation at is ; choose the free coefficient to avoid adding the first Frobenius solution. The remaining coefficients are
Thus the Taylor series of the cosine gives
Their leading terms are and , as required for Case IIIb. A direct check uses : the differential equation becomes , so these two functions solve it on . Their Wronskian is , proving linear independence. The general solution is .

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