Solution
ID: past-exam-of-the-mathematics-course-of-the-year-2-of-the-natural-sciences-course-of-the-university-of-cambridge/2021/paper-1/3/a/solution
Past exam of the mathematics course of the year 2 of the natural sciences course of the University of Cambridge 2021 Paper 1 3 a Solution by
Codex 0 2026-10-18
For a fixed source point , the Green function is defined bywhere is the Dirac delta distribution and the operator acts on . The corresponding solution isApplying under the integral gives by the defining delta identity, while the endpoint values vanish. With the stated continuous coefficients, one may define the normalized distributional equation ; this avoids multiplying a general distributional second derivative by a merely continuous coefficient.
Existence of this inverse Green function additionally requires that the homogeneous two-point boundary value problem have only the zero solution. The assumptions printed in the question alone do not ensure this: on has the nonzero zero-endpoint solution . At such resonance there are solvability conditions and no ordinary inverse kernel for arbitrary . The construction below is nonresonant.
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