Sine expansion and Rayleigh quotient of a parabolic Dirichlet trial

ID: sine-expansion-and-rayleigh-quotient-of-a-parabolic-dirichlet-trial

On , integration by parts gives the displayed Fourier sine series. For normalized Dirichlet eigenfunctions , indexed from , it has the form , with and . Its Rayleigh quotient for is , since and . Reflection symmetry forces , because that first excited eigenfunction is antisymmetric about . Thus the first excited state's contribution to the error is exactly zero; the first nonzero correction is .

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