Solution

ID: past-exam-of-the-year-1-of-the-computer-science-course-of-the-university-of-oxford/2018/discrete-mathematics-continuous-mathematics-and-probability/4/b/iv/solution

Seek a periodic particular solution with Fourier coefficients . Comparing constant terms gives . Comparing the cosine and sine terms for gives
so and . Insert the coefficients from part (a) and add the homogeneous solution:
The differentiated series converges absolutely and uniformly, because its largest coefficient terms are . This justifies the term-by-term first derivative used in substituting into the differential equation. Any two solutions differ by , proving that the displayed family is the general solution. The computation is an instance of Fourier response of a first-order linear differential equation.

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