Nonexistence of degenerate boundary conditions in a spectral problem (Q2229329)

The paper studies the characteristic determinant \(\Delta(\lambda)\) of a boundary value problem given by a second order ordinary differential expression. Examples are known where \(\Delta(\lambda)\) vanishes identically for a Sturm-Liouville eigenvalue problem and hence, the spectrum covers the whole complex plane. From this point of view, the associated boundary conditions are called degenerate if \(\Delta(\lambda)\) is constant. In a first step a problem of the form \[ \frac{d^2y}{dx^2} + p_1(x,\lambda)\frac{dy}{dx} + p_2(x,\lambda)y = 0 \text{ on } [0,1] \] is considered with linear boundary conditions involving the values of \(y\) and \(y'\) at \(0\) and \(1\). Here, \(p_1(x,\lambda)\) depends linearly on \(\lambda\) and \(p_2(x,\lambda)\) quadratically. Conditions on these coefficients are formulated such that none of the two-point boundary conditions are degenerate. In a second step a similar result is obtained for a more involved setting.