Fractional Sturm-Liouville eigenvalue problems. I. (Q2293206)

The authors introduce and obtaine the general solution of three two-term fractional differential equations of mixed Caputo/Riemann-Liouville type. The solve a Dirichlet type Sturm-Liouville eigenvalue problem for a fractional differential equation derived from a special composition of a Caputo and a Riemann-Liouville operator on a finite interval, where the boundary conditions are induced by evaluating Riemann-Liouville integrals at those endpoints. For each \( 1/2 <\alpha< 1 \), it is shown that there is a finite number of real eigenvalues, an infinite number of non-real eigenvalues, that the number of such real eigenvalues grows without bound as \(\alpha\to 1^-\), and that the fractional operator converges to an ordinary two term Sturm-Liouville operator as \(\alpha\to 1^-\) with Dirichlet boundary conditions.