Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2015 ii Paper 2 37E a Solution Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-10-06
Order the interior grid values into a vector. The coefficient matrix has diagonal and off-diagonal entries at horizontal and vertical neighbours, with boundary values already zero. Every row is strictly diagonally dominant because . The standard convergence theorem for strict diagonal dominance gives convergence of both the Jacobi method and the Gauss-Seidel method. The matrix is also symmetric positive definite.
For , the weighted Jacobi method is , with iteration matrix . The sine-product grid eigenvectors giveThese weighted Jacobi eigenvalues for a square Dirichlet grid determine convergence. All eigenvalues of are positive. Thus for fixed convergence requires , where . As , this upper bound tends to from above. Any fixed therefore fails on sufficiently fine grids; also fails. Consequently is necessary for all mesh sizes, and it is sufficient, since for every finite grid.