Frobenius method
In mathematics, the Method of Frobenius, named after Ferdinand Georg Frobenius, is a way to find an infinite series solution for a second-order ordinary differential equation of the form
with
in the vicinity of the regular singular point . We can divide by to obtain a differential equation of the form
which will not be solvable with regular power series methods if either p(z)/z or q(z)/z2 are not analytic at z = 0. The Frobenius method enables us to create a power series solution to such a differential equation, provided that p(z) and q(z) are themselves analytic at 0 or, being analytic elsewhere, both their limits at 0 exist (and are finite).
The Method of Frobenius tells us that we can seek a power series solution of the form
Differentiating:
Substituting:
The expression
is known as the indicial polynomial, which is quadratic in r. The general definition of the indicial polynomial is the coefficient of the lowest power of z in the infinite series. In this case it happens to be that this is the rth coefficient but, it is possible for the lowest possible exponent to be r − 2, r − 1 or, something else depending on the given differential equation. This detail is important to keep in mind. In the process of synchronizing all the series of the differential equation to start at the same index value (which in the above expression is k = 1), one can end up with complicated expressions. However, in solving for the indicial roots attention is focused only on the coefficient of the lowest power of z.
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