On the completeness of the system of root vectors of the Sturm-Liouville operator with general boundary conditions (Q1002818)

Consider the eigenvalue problem \[ -y''qy=\lambda y, \] where \(q\in L\left( 0,1\right) \) and general boundary conditions \[ U_{i}\left( y\right) =a_{i1}y(0)+a_{i2}y'(0)+a_{i3}y(1)+a_{i4}y'(1)=0\quad\text{for }i=1,2. \] Here, \(q\) is complex valued and \(a_{ik}\in \mathbb{C}.\) Next define a fundamental set of solutions \(c\left( x,\lambda \right) \) and \(s(x,\lambda )\) satisfying the initial value problem \(c(0,\lambda )=s'(0,\lambda )=1\) and \(s(0,\lambda )=c'(0,\lambda )=0\). Decompose the characteristic function \(\Delta \left( \lambda \right) =J_{12}+J_{34}+J_{13}s\left( 1,\lambda \right) +J_{14}s'\left( 1,\lambda \right) +J_{32}c\left( 1,\lambda \right) +J_{42}c'(1,\lambda )\) whose zeros are the eigenvalues. If it is not trivial, \(\Delta (\lambda )\neq \) const, \(q\in C^{k}[0,1]\) and \(q^{(k)}(0)\neq \left( -1\right) ^{k}q^{(k)}(1)\) then the system of root functions is complete and minimal in \(L^{p}\left( 0,1\right)\) for \(p\geq 1.\) The proof uses transformation operators.