The distance between points of a solution of a second order linear differential equation satisfying general boundary conditions (Q1722124)

Summary: This paper presents a method to obtain lower and upper bounds for the minimum distance between points \(a\) and \(b\) of the solution of the second order linear differential equation \(y'' + q(x) y = 0\) satisfying general separated boundary conditions of the type \(a_{11} y(a) + a_{12} y'(a) = 0\) and \(a_{21} y(b) + a_{22} y'(b) = 0\). The method is based on the recursive application of a linear operator to certain functions, a recursive application that makes these bounds converge to the exact distance between \(a\) and \(b\) as the recursivity index grows. The method covers conjugacy and disfocality as particular cases.