Explicit half-range expansions for Sturm–Liouville operators

Abstract

Boundary value problems for linear transport equations sometimes require the explicit construction of solutions when boundary conditions are prescribed only on parts of the boundary and thus necessitate the construction of half-range expansions. In contrast to the standard eigenfunction expansion, a half-range expansion of a given function must be reconstructed just over half the domain, using just half of the eigenfunctions. The difficulty of such expansions arises because the eigenfunctions are not orthogonal, though they are complete, over half the domain, and there is no obvious method of obtaining the expansion coefficients. Here we use complex variable techniques to find explicit formulas for the coefficients of half-range expansions for regular, negative definite Sturm–Liouville operators. We prove that the half-range expansion formula is unique, and find the corresponding half-range Green functions.