Solution

ID: past-exam-of-the-mathematics-course-of-the-university-of-cambridge/2017/ii/paper-4/39a/a/solution

Let . The zero Dirichlet boundary values introduce no forcing terms, so the scheme is
The common orthogonal sine eigenvectors have -eigenvalues . Thus is invertible for every , and each amplification eigenvalue is
The matrix is orthogonally diagonalizable, so its powers have Euclidean norm at most one, uniformly in the mesh and time step. Therefore Crank-Nicolson diffusion scheme is stable for every . Negative amplification factors at large can create temporal sign oscillations, which do not contradict this norm stability.

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