Use displacements from an equilibrium, so the two spring extensions are and . The kinetic energy and elastic potential energy are
Thus and , with the small-oscillation mass and stiffness matrices
If instead denote absolute positions, the appropriate natural spring lengths must first be subtracted from the differences in . They do not affect the equations for displacements.
Euler-Lagrange equations give , so a normal mode obeys the generalized eigenvalue problem for small oscillations . Reflection symmetry separates antisymmetric shapes from symmetric shapes . In the antisymmetric sector the end equation is , giving . In the symmetric sector the two independent equations are
Twice the first plus the second gives . If , then . Otherwise , and substitution into the first equation gives . Thus the three independent shapes are:
For both springs retain their lengths, so this is uniform translation. For the end masses move oppositely and their forces on the middle mass cancel. For the end masses move together, while the middle mass moves oppositely so the centre of mass remains fixed. Direct substitution verifies all three eigenpairs; for positive the three eigenvalues are distinct and exhaust the three degrees of freedom. These are the normal modes of three masses connected by two equal springs.
A useful normalization is the weighted inner product induced by . Since the squared mass norms are , and , respectively, take
If ordinary Euclidean unit eigenvectors are intended instead, divide by , respectively. The frequencies and physical motions are independent of this normalization choice. The zero-frequency coordinate has general motion rather than an oscillation.
Substitute into the axisymmetric heat equation and cancel the exponential:
Thus the radial ordinary differential equation and its Sturm-Liouville form are
The weight in this Sturm-Liouville problem is therefore . The outer Dirichlet boundary condition is , and the physical solution is regular at the centre. The factor in the weighted inner product is also the radial part of the polar area element.
Seek a positive weight such that the differential operator becomes . Matching the second derivative gives , while matching the first derivative requires . Consequently
Choosing the multiplicative constant to be one gives
This is Sturm-Liouville form with zero potential term. Multiply the equations for by , subtract, and integrate. The Lagrange identity for a Sturm-Liouville operator gives
The boundary expression vanishes because and the functions and their derivatives are finite. Since are distinct, their eigenvalues are distinct, proving
The endpoint singularities of the weight are integrable, so these weighted inner products exist.
A weighted Sturm-Liouville operator has the form
where are real, and in the interval's interior, and the coefficients have the regularity required by the derivatives. The corresponding eigenvalue equation is . Its natural weighted inner product is . Suitable endpoint conditions must also annihilate for a self-adjoint differential operator; the displayed differential expression alone does not specify those conditions.
Two integrations by parts give the boundary form of the Sturm-Liouville operator:
The interior terms cancel because are real. Thus the required endpoint condition is
For a regular interval, a standard self-adjoint domain is specified by one real homogeneous Robin boundary condition at each endpoint:
where neither pair of real constants is identically zero. At each end, these conditions force the two boundary data vectors of to be proportional, making the displayed form zero. Dirichlet boundary conditions and Neumann boundary conditions are the cases and . Coupled conditions also work, for example and , whose two endpoint contributions cancel. Self-adjointness uses the maximal common domain with these conditions, not an arbitrary smaller symmetric restriction.
The weighted inner product must be nondegenerate. The usual interpretation is almost everywhere, allowing isolated endpoint zeros as in part (b), with the operator defined on its appropriate weighted domain. Merely allowing a weight that is zero on an entire interval would not by itself define the stated operator or a positive-definite inner product on ordinary functions.
Use the normalized eigenfunctions and their weighted inner product . Orthogonality gives
For complex trials, means the corresponding Hermitian quadratic form with ; it agrees with the displayed functional on real trials. If , division by yields
Since , this is at least . The Rayleigh-Ritz variational principle therefore gives an upper bound from any admissible trial, improved by minimizing over trial parameters or enlarging the trial space. Equality holds when the trial is entirely in the lowest eigenspace.
The displayed ratio using presupposes . If , use the undivided quotient instead; the same upper-bound argument still applies. No ground-state coefficient can be divided out in that case.
Use the normalized eigenfunctions with the stated weighted inner product. Orthogonality gives . The corrected Sturm-Liouville problem and the vanishing boundary term give
For a complex trial the numerator means , agreeing with the given formula for real trials. Therefore
It is a convex combination of the eigenvalues, with equality only for a trial proportional to the lowest eigenfunction. The Rayleigh-Ritz variational principle consequently estimates by choosing a nonzero admissible trial family and minimizing this quotient over its parameters:
The result is an upper bound. A more flexible trial space can lower it, while equality requires that the exact lowest eigenfunction belong to the trial space. One need not know the expansion coefficients to calculate the quotient directly from the trial function.
Use a logarithmic change of variable in a Sturm-Liouville problem: set and . The chain rule gives
The endpoint conditions become . Multiplying by and integrating shows that for a nonzero solution. Put . The first endpoint selects and the second requires , . Hence
These eigenfunctions are orthonormal in the specified weighted inner product, because and
Use the standard regular Sturm-Liouville problem hypotheses: positive weight , real coefficients, and real self-adjoint boundary conditions. The positive weight and boundary-domain assumptions are implicit in the requested real orthonormal basis; real differential coefficients alone would not guarantee them for arbitrary complex boundary conditions.
Multiply the eigenfunction equation by and integrate. By self-adjointness, the number is real, whereas
The second integral is strictly positive, so . Because the coefficients and boundary conditions are real, the real and imaginary parts of any complex eigenfunction separately obey the same equation and conditions. At least one is nonzero, so a real eigenfunction can be chosen. More generally, each eigenspace has a real basis, which can be orthonormalized using the weighted inner product.
The orthogonality of Sturm-Liouville eigenfunctions, with normalization chosen to one, is
For the real choice, omit the complex conjugate.
Apply the identity from (c) to the two real eigenfunctions. The equations of their Sturm-Liouville problem give
Since the eigenvalues differ,
This is orthogonality in the weighted inner product.
Radial vibrations of a circular membrane Created 2026-10-18 Updated 2026-10-20
A fixed circular elastic membrane of radius has radial normal modes satisfying the displayed Sturm-Liouville problem, with weight , and regularity at the origin. The regular solutions are Bessel functions of the first kind . Integration by parts gives the positive Rayleigh quotient . Distinct modes are orthogonal in the weighted inner product .
For noninteger real , expand a smooth forcing as in Chebyshev polynomials. Because , division of each coefficient by gives the regular solution. The coefficients use the weighted inner product with weight . Choosing the same endpoint domain as the regular eigenfunctions of the Sturm-Liouville problem is essential: finite values alone also allow homogeneous solutions and , which generally have divergent endpoint derivatives. Setting converts the regular endpoint condition into the Neumann boundary conditions . The homogeneous equation then has no nonzero solution when is noninteger, proving uniqueness in this domain.
String with an endpoint mass Created 2026-10-18 Updated 2026-10-20
For a uniform string with tension , linear mass density , left end fixed, and a freely transverse-moving point mass at , the wave equation and endpoint law are
The last equation is Newton's second law: the string pulls the mass back toward the interior, giving the minus sign. With wave speed , a nonzero normal mode has spatial part and satisfies
For , its dimensionless roots occur once in each , , because decreases from infinity to zero while increases. For , : the right end has a homogeneous Neumann boundary condition. There is no nonzero zero-frequency mode, since a linear spatial profile vanishing at the left end and with zero right slope must vanish everywhere.
Multiplying the spatial equation by and using integration by parts gives
For two different modes, the same calculation gives the weighted inner product orthogonality . The endpoint mass therefore contributes to both inertia and mode orthogonality.
Let and be real symmetric positive-definite matrices. The principal square root of a positive semidefinite matrix construction gives an invertible matrix for each. Set
Then is equivalent to . This is a matrix congruence, and is a symmetric positive-definite matrix: , and for every nonzero vector ,
since . This short proof establishes both requirements for applying the Conjugate gradient method to the transformed linear system.
The left transformed matrix has the same eigenvalues because
Its correct geometry uses the weighted inner product : . Thus it is symmetric in this inner product, even when it is not a symmetric matrix in ordinary coordinates. The spectral condition number governing the transformed symmetric problem is , not generally .
The Preconditioned conjugate gradient method realizes this transformation using auxiliary solves , without constructing or its matrix inverse. With fixed , initialize and ; while , use
then solve and set
Stop at a zero linear-system residual before forming another ratio. Positive definiteness makes the denominators positive before termination.[ref]
An invertible matrix alone is insufficient: with and , the left transformed matrix has eigenvalues , and has no real symmetric positive-definite matrix square root. Even a valid symmetric positive-definite matrix can worsen conditioning if its scaling is unsuitable, as the next worked example shows.
Vector normalization Created 2026-10-14 Updated 2026-10-18
Vector normalization converts a nonzero vector in a normed vector space into a unit vector. Absolute homogeneity of a norm gives
The direction is unchanged by multiplying by a positive real scalar. For , and ; for a negative real scalar, . Thus and normalize to the same unit vector, while normalizes to its negative. This decomposition is useful for specifying a direction independently of a force, velocity or displacement magnitude.
In a complex normed vector space, a nonzero complex scalar instead gives . The remaining complex argument is not removed by normalization. For a pure quantum state, vectors differing only by this overall global phase represent the same physical state; vector normalization alone does not identify them.
The zero vector cannot be normalized this way. The construction also applies in a function space: an eigenfunction of a Sturm-Liouville problem can be scaled to unit weighted norm by
The positive weight specifies the weighted inner product. Multiplication by this nonzero constant preserves the eigenvalue equation and its homogeneous boundary conditions.
Weighted Euclidean inner product Created 2026-10-14 Updated 2026-10-18
A symmetric positive-definite matrix defines an inner product on real coordinate vectors by
For diagonal , positive diagonal entries weight the squared coordinate errors. This is the finite-coordinate version of a weighted inner product; the positive-definite matrix example appears in Francis Narcowich, Inner Products and Norms, standard inner products, example 8.
For , the squared norm of is . A first-coordinate error of one costs as much as a second-coordinate error of two. The unit sphere is the ellipse , and orthogonality means . Thus “closest” and “perpendicular” depend on the chosen inner product. The orthogonal projection residual example shows how this changes a best approximation.
Weighted Neumann heat kernel with constant drift Created 2026-10-05 Updated 2026-10-06
On , the differential operator with homogeneous Neumann boundary conditions is self-adjoint in the weighted inner product with weight . Its eigenfunctions and nonnegative decay rates are
Their squared norms are and . The Sturm-Liouville eigenfunction expansion gives
This kernel acts against the measure , not Lebesgue measure alone. It is symmetric in ; the transition density against Lebesgue measure is .
Weighted norm 2026-10-18
A positive measurable weight defines the displayed norm on the L2 space for the measure , with functions identified when equal almost everywhere. This is the norm induced by the weighted inner product. Changing changes the contribution of each region to approximation error. If are nonzero mutually orthogonal real functions, completing squares shows that the unique best approximation to real in their linear span has coefficients .