Solution

ID: past-exam-of-the-mathematics-course-of-the-year-2-of-the-natural-sciences-course-of-the-university-of-cambridge/2005/paper-1/6/solution

For , a singular point is a regular singular point if and are analytic there. The Bessel differential equation has and , so zero is regular singular.
Use the Frobenius method with , . Matching coefficients gives and , with missing negative-index coefficients zero. The regular root is . Then , all odd coefficients vanish, and the Frobenius series for Bessel functions has recurrence
For noninteger , the root supplies an independent even-power series with and . None of these denominators vanishes. With standard normalization this is , independent of the Bessel function of the first kind . The real powers here are understood for .
For integer and the stated normalization , iteration gives
The ratio of consecutive term magnitudes is . Thus the series converges absolutely for every finite complex , defining an entire function for integer . At integer order, ; an independent solution is instead the Bessel function of the second kind.

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