Past exam of the mathematics course of the year 2 of the natural sciences course of the University of Cambridge / 2001 / Paper 1 / 7

Boundary form. For real functions and $\mathcal{L}y=-(p{y}^{\prime }{)}^{\prime }+qy$, integration by parts givesThe integral terms containing $p{y}_1^{\prime }{y}_2^{\prime }$ cancel, as do the $q$ terms. This is the Lagrange identity for a Sturm-Liouville operator. The boundary conditions must make this boundary form zero for every admissible pair. Several suitable choices are homogeneous Dirichlet boundary conditions at both endpoints; homogeneous Neumann boundary conditions at both endpoints; one of each; or separated homogeneous Robin boundary conditionswhere each fixed real pair $(\alpha ,\beta )$ is nonzero. At each endpoint the two boundary data vectors are then proportional, making their antisymmetric product zero. Another choice is periodic data $y(a)=y(b)$ and $p(a)y^{\prime }(a)=p(b)y^{\prime }(b)$, which cancel the two endpoint contributions. These domains give the required self-adjoint differential operator in the regular setting.

Eigenfunctions. Set $x=\cos \theta$, $0\le \theta \le \pi$, and $Y(\theta )=y(\cos \theta )$. The chain rule givesThe Chebyshev differential equation therefore becomes $Y^{\prime \prime }+n^{2}Y=0$, with $Y(0)=Y(\pi )=0$. For a positive integer $n$, the first condition excludes the cosine term and the second is satisfied by $\sin (n\theta )$. ThusThere is no nonzero $n=0$ eigenfunction: the transformed solution is linear in $\theta$ and vanishes at both endpoints only if identically zero. Negative $n$ merely repeats a positive mode with the opposite sign, so it is excluded from the indexing of an independent eigenbasis.

Weight and normalization. Multiplying the differential equation by $-1/\sqrt{1-x^2}$ puts it into Sturm-Liouville form:Hence $p=\sqrt{1-x^2}$, $q=0$ and $w=(1-x^2{)}^{-1/2}$. Under $x=\cos \theta$, the measure $w(x)dx$ becomes $-d\theta$, soThereforeThese endpoints are singular because $p$ vanishes and $w$ diverges there, but the weight is integrable. Moreover $p{y}_n^{\prime }=-N_{n}n\cos (n\theta )$ remains finite, so the vanishing values of $y_n$ make the boundary form zero. These are the Dirichlet eigenfunctions of the Chebyshev differential operator, not the first-kind Chebyshev polynomials $\cos (n\arccos x)$, which have nonzero endpoint values.