Solution

ID: past-exam-of-the-differential-equations-and-applications-course-of-the-university-of-oxford/2011/b/5/c/solution

For a fixed observation point , use the backward adjoint Green function with . It satisfies for , decays with its spatial derivative as , and has terminal distribution . Extending it by zero for gives .
For , integration by parts proves
Evaluating this constant pairing at the initial and terminal times yields
By translating the heat kernel with constant absorption and reversing the time difference,
The terminal singularity is understood as a distribution; the representation follows for smooth decaying data and extends to standard integrable data by the heat-kernel approximation argument.

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