Series Solutions of Differential Equations
Table of contents
Series Solutions of Differential Equations ...... 1 1. Powerseriessolutions ...... 1 1.1. Anexample ...... 1 1.2. Power series and analytic functions ...... 3 1.3. Moreexamples ...... 8 1.4. Ordinaryandsingularpoints ...... 10 2. Equationswithanalyticcoefficients ...... 13 3. DealingwithSingularPoints ...... 18 3.1. Motivation ...... 18 3.2. TheMethodofFrobenius ...... 19 Case 1: r1 r2 isnotaninteger ...... 22 − Case 2: r1 = r2 ...... 23 Case 3: r r isanon-zerointeger ...... 25 1 − 2 4. SpecialFunctions ...... 29 4.1. Besselfunctions ...... 29 5. Beyondregularsingularpoint ...... 30 1. Power series solutions. 1.1. An example. So far we can effectively solve linear equations (homogeneous and non-homongeneous) with constant coefficients, but for equations with variable coefficients only special cases are discussed (1st order, etc.). Now we turn to this latter case and try to find a general method. The idea is to assume that the unknown function y can be expanded into a power series: 2 y( x) = a0 + a1 x + a2 x + (1)
We try to determine the coefficients a0, a1 ,
Example 1. Solve y ′ 2 x y = 0. (2) − Solution. Substitute 2 y( x) = a0 + a1 x + a2 x + (3) into the equation. We have 2 2 3 a + 2 a x + 3 a x + 2 a x + a x + a x + = 0. (4) 1 2 3 − 0 1 2 · Rewrite it to 2 a + ( 2 a 2 a ) x + ( 3 a 2 a ) x + = 0. (5) 1 2 − 0 3 − 1 Naturally we require the coefficients to each power of x to be 0:
a1 = 0 (6) 2 a 2 a = 0 (7) 2 − 0 3 a 2 a = 0 (8)
3 − 1