Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2001 iii Paper 50 3 b Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-14
For the positive-drift equation, the outer expansion obeys . Select the boundary condition at the right endpoint, obtaining . The first correction satisfiesIntegrating givesThe boundary condition mismatch is at . Set and use the inner expansion . The inner equation is . At leading order, matching to and imposing give . At first order,The outer expansion in the overlap is . Matching its constant and linear terms givesThe additive composite expansion adds inner and outer approximations and subtracts the common overlap:It meets the left condition exactly and the right condition up to exponentially small terms, with an uniform asymptotic error. This is the first-order composite expansion for a positive drift specialized to the present coefficients.
Reversing the drift moves the decaying boundary layer to ; the outer solution is selected at . For the second equation, is in fact an exact solution, but predicts at the right boundary instead of . Put . The inner equation becomesMatching to givesIndeed, and , as required by the order- boundary value. Since , and give the endpoint derivative in a negative-drift boundary layer:The order-one term cannot be obtained by differentiating the leading inner solution alone.