THE STURM-LIOUVILLE PROBLEM AND THE POLAR REPRESENTATION THEOREM JORGE REZENDE Grupo de Física-Matemática da Universidade de Lisboa Av. Prof. Gama Pinto 2, 1649-003 Lisboa, PORTUGAL and Departamento de Matemática, Faculdade de Ciências da Universidade de Lisboa e-mail:
[email protected] Dedicated to the memory of Professor Ruy Luís Gomes Abstract: The polar representation theorem for the n-dimensional time-dependent linear Hamiltonian system Q˙ = BQ + CP , P˙ = −AQ − B∗P , with continuous coefficients, states that, given two isotropic solu- tions (Q1,P1) and (Q2,P2), with the identity matrix as Wronskian, the formula Q2 = r cos ϕ, Q1 = r sin ϕ, holds, where r and ϕ are continuous matrices, det r =6 0 and ϕ is symmetric. In this article we use the monotonicity properties of the matrix ϕ arXiv:1006.5718v1 [math.CA] 29 Jun 2010 eigenvalues in order to obtain results on the Sturm-Liouville prob- lem. AMS Subj. Classification: 34B24, 34C10, 34A30 Key words: Sturm-Liouville theory, Hamiltonian systems, polar representation. 1. Introduction Let n = 1, 2,.... In this article, (., .) denotes the natural inner 1 product in Rn. For x ∈ Rn one writes x2 =(x, x), |x| =(x, x) 2 . If ∗ M is a real matrix, we shall denote M its transpose. Mjk denotes the matrix entry located in row j and column k. In is the identity n × n matrix. Mjk can be a matrix. For example, M can have the four blocks M11, M12, M21, M22. In a case like this one, if M12 = M21 =0, we write M = diag (M11, M22).