Global existence and uniqueness for the Kummer transformation problem subject to non-Cauchy data (Q1176211)

This paper is a sequel of the authors' previous two papers [Asymptotic and computational analysis. Conference in honor of Frank W. J. Olver's 65th birthday, Proc. Int. Symp., Winnipeg/Can. 1989, Lect. Notes Pure Appl. Math. 124, 707-722 (1990; Zbl 0704.34006); Math Comput. 55, No. 192, 591-612 (1990; Zbl 0676.65041)] on evaluation zeros of solutions of second order differential equations. In this paper, the authors establish the global existence and uniqueness for the non-Cauchy problem associated with Kummer third order nonlinear differential in 1834, namely (1) \(Q(x)x'{}^ 2=q(t)-{1\over 2}(x,t)\), where \[ (x,t)={x'''\over x'}-{3\over 3}{x''{}^ 2\over x'{}^ 2}, \leqno (2) \] which plays a central role in the theory of transformations between any two linear homogeneous ordinary differential equations like (3) \(d^ 2y/dt^ 2+q(t)y=0\), \(t\in j\equiv(a,b)\), (3') \(d^ 2Y/dT^ 2+Q(T)Y=0\), \(t\in J\equiv (A,B)\), where \(q\in C^ 0(j)\), \(Q\in C^ 0(J)\), \(-\infty\leq a<b\leq\infty\), \(- \infty\leq A<B\leq+\infty\). The authors concentrate on the special case of (1) obtained when \(Q=1\), i.e. (4) \(\alpha'{}^ 2=q(t)-{1\over 2}(\alpha,t)\), whose solution is the function \(\alpha(t)\) three times differentiable and with \(\alpha'\neq 0\) on \(j\). The authors also demonstrate the connections between the Kummer transformation problem and the Liouville-Green approximation in the oscillatory case while they illustrate applications to Bessel functions, central dispersions and numerical analysis at the end of the paper.