A spline collocation method for singular integral equations with piecewise continuous coefficients (Q1062745)

The authors are concerned with the singular integral equation \[ a(t)x(t)+b(t)/i\pi \int_{\Gamma}(x(\tau)/\tau -t)d\tau =y(t), \] where \(\Gamma\) is a simple closed Ljapunov curve in \({\mathbb{C}}\) and a and b are piecewise continuous functions. They consider a collocation method with linear splines as trial functions and give a necessary and sufficient condition for the stability of this method. As a consequence of this result, they can also give conditions for the convergence of this spline collocation method. The results are also used to treat the analogous problems for the case where \(\Gamma\) is replaced by an interval in \({\mathbb{R}}\).