On the \(j\)th eigenvalue of Sturm-Liouville problem and the Maslov index (Q2172773)

The authors use the Maslov index to count the jump number of eigenvalues for the Sturm-Liouville problem. The first new contribution of this paper is that the jump number of these eigenvalue branches is exactly the Maslov index for the path of the corresponding boundary conditions. The second result is to determine the sharp range of the \(j\)th eigenvalue on each layer of the space of boundary conditions. Finally, the authors prove that the graph of monodromy matrix tends to the Dirichlet boundary condition as the spectral parameter goes to \(- \infty\).