Isospectral vector-valued Sturm-Liouville problems (Q1386533)

The authors consider vector-valued Sturm-Liouville problems, which consist of differential equations of the form \(-y'' + Q(x)y = \lambda y\), \(0\leq x \leq \pi\), together with appropriate boundary conditions. Here, \(Q\) is a real symmetric matrix. They consider the possibility that two such problems (with different matrices, say \(Q_1(x)\) and \(Q_2(x)\)) have the same spectrum, and obtain, inter alia, (a) a transmutation operator given by \(\varphi_2(x) = \varphi_1(x) + \int_0^x K(x,y)\varphi_1(y)dy\) relating the eigenfunctions of the second problem to those of the first, (b) an equation \(Q_2(x) = Q_1(x) + {d \over dx} K(x,x)\) describing the relationship between the matrices in terms of the kernel of the transmutation operator.