The classification of self-adjoint boundary conditions of differential operators with two singular endpoints (Q633651)

For general even order linear symmetric ordinary differential equations with real coefficients and endpoints which are regular or singular and for arbitrary deficiency index, the authors classify the self-adjoint boundary conditions into three types: separated, coupled, and mixed. They give a construction for all conditions of each type which represents a given self-adjoint domain. This construction gives a direct alternative to the recent construction of Everitt and Markus which uses the theory of symplectic spaces.