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The Two-Sided Factorization of Ordinary Differential Operators

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Patrick J. Browne
Affiliation:
The University of Calgary, Calgary, Alberta
Rodney Nillsen
Affiliation:
The University of Wollongong, Wollongong, New South Wales
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Throughout this paper we shall use I to denote a given interval, not necessarily bounded, of real numbers and Cn to denote the real valued n times continuously differentiable functions on I and C0 will be abbreviated to C. By a differential operator of order n we shall mean a linear function L:CnC of the form

1.1

where pn(x) ≠ 0 for xI and pi ∊ Cj 0 ≦ jn. The function pn is called the leading coefficient of L.

It is well known (see, for example, [2, pp. 73-74]) thai a differential operator L of order n uniquely determines both a differential operator L* of order n (the adjoint of L) and a bilinear form [·,·]L (the Lagrange bracket) so that if D denotes differentiation, we have for u, vCn,

1.2

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Mathematical Society 1980

References

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