On the construction of solutions of systems of linear ordinary differential equations in the neighbourhood of a regular singularity (Q1186902)

The authors construct all linearly independent solutions of systems of linear ordinary differential equations in the neighbourhood of a regular singularity. They consider the equation (1) \(xdy/dx=Ay\), where \(x\) is a complex variable, \(y=y(x)\) and \(A=A(x)\) are a complex unknown vector- function of dimension \(d\) (a column) and a complex \(d\times d\) matrix- function, respectively. The method described by the authors enables them to construct all linearly independent solutions of (1) in the form of an algebraic combination of a power series and a logarithmic function. They construct the solutions in both cases of a simple and defect ``leading'' matrix of coefficients in the equations. The authors give one of the solutions of (1) in the form \[ y^{(s)}(x)=\sum^ s_{r=0}{s\choose r}(\log x)^ ru^{(s-r)}(x), \leqno (2) \] where \({s\choose r}={s!\over r!(s-r)!}\), \(s\geq 0\) is an integer, \(u(x)=x^ \alpha\sum^ \infty_{k=0}u_ kx^ k\) provided that \(u_ k\) are independent of \(x\) and \(\alpha\) is any arbitrary complex parameter which depends on \(u(.)\). They prove by induction that if (2) is a solution of (1), then the following functions are also solutions of (1): \[ \begin{multlined} y^{(0)}(x)=u^{(0)}(x),\;y^{(1)}(x)=(\log x)u^{(0)}(x)+u^{(1)}(x),\ldots\\\ldots y^{(r- 1)}(x)=\sum^{s-1}_{r=0}{s-1\choose r}(\log x)^ ru^{(s-1- r)}(x).\end{multlined} \] The convergence of power series in solutions is proved in section 5 and the estimate of the errors which arise due to the truncation of these series is obtained in section 6. Section 7 contains an application of the authors' method to solving one-particle Schrödinger equations and to calculating the \(S\)-matrix which characterizes the scattering of a hole by Coulomb potential in a semiconductor with complex valence band structure and to studying the effect of deep impurity centre charge on optical transitions to degenerate valence bands. --- The paper is marred by a lot of misprints.