Solution

ID: past-exam-of-the-mathematics-course-of-the-year-2-of-the-natural-sciences-course-of-the-university-of-cambridge/2023/paper-1/2/b/solution

The two homogeneous Dirichlet boundary conditions on force negative separation constants. The initial profile is an even function, so only the even sine-family eigenfunctions are needed:
They obey and . Odd eigenfunctions have zero projection onto the even initial data. Hence the initial coefficients are
The desired eigenfunction expansion is therefore
At this is the Fourier series of on the interval; its coefficients are absolutely summable. Each term satisfies the partial differential equation and side conditions. For the additional Gaussian decay in justifies termwise differentiation. Since and , the whole series decays uniformly as .

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