Past exam of the mathematics course of the year 2 of the natural sciences course of the University of Cambridge / 2018 / Paper 1 / 8 / b / Solution

Apply the Frobenius method. For $y=x^{\sigma }{\sum }_{n=0}^{\infty }{a}_n{x}^n$, the coefficient of the lowest power $x^{\sigma }$ comes only from $2x^2{y}^{\prime \prime }-x{y}^{\prime }+y$; the remaining term $xy$ starts one power higher. As $a_0\ne 0$, this lowest coefficient gives the indicial equationTherefore the two possible characteristic exponents at a regular singular point areTheir difference is not an integer, so the two corresponding Frobenius solutions do not require a logarithmic correction.