Solution

ID: past-exam-of-the-mathematics-course-of-the-year-2-of-the-natural-sciences-course-of-the-university-of-cambridge/2004/paper-1/7/c/solution

Use the drift-removing substitution for a Dirichlet Sturm-Liouville problem, . It gives with . Positive requires ; zero or negative yields only the trivial solution under both endpoint conditions. Hence
Multiplication of the original equation by gives . Thus the appropriate weighted inner product has weight , and
Multiplying each eigenfunction by gives weighted norm one.

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