Solution

ID: past-exam-of-the-mathematics-course-of-the-year-2-of-the-natural-sciences-course-of-the-university-of-cambridge/2013/paper-1/3/ii/solution

Use the boundary-adapted homogeneous solutions
For a source point , the Green function is
It vanishes at both endpoints and is continuous at . Its first derivative has the jump
as required for a monic second-order differential operator with a Dirac delta source. Away from that source it is a homogeneous solution and extends smoothly through .
The interior singular point requires a qualification. This is a Green kernel with a vanishing Wronskian at an interior singular point, with a singularity in its source variable. It is not an ordinary integral inverse for unrestricted forcing. For smooth forcing , however, the product extends continuously at zero and the integral is well defined. This includes part (iii). We use solutions with two continuous derivatives across zero, interpreting the equation there after multiplication by . For such a solution, expansion at zero forces ; arbitrary nonzero forcing at zero cannot satisfy this regularity. Merely imposing one continuous derivative would leave a piecewise homogeneous ambiguity, so the original singular coefficients alone do not specify an unrestricted boundary-value inverse.

New to topics? Read the docs here!