Fourth order canonical forms of singular self-adjoint boundary conditions (Q426083)

Following their earlier work [J. Math. Anal. Appl. 387, No. 2, 1176--1187 (2012; Zbl 1245.34018)] on regular problems, the authors find canonical forms for singular boundary value problems for fourth-order linear ordinary differential equations with one or both endpoints of the domain being singular, and with arbitrary deficiency index \(d\). In the regular fourth-order case, \(d=4\). In the singular case, \(d\) can have any value between \(0\) and \(4\), and depends on the nature of the singularities at the two endpoints. The dependence of \(d\) on the endpoints introduces additional complications which are addressed in this paper.