Differentiability of eigenfunctions of the closures of differential operators with rational coefficient functions

TL;DR

This paper proves the regularity of eigenfunctions of certain differential operators with rational coefficients, establishing a correspondence with solutions of the differential equation without assuming prior regularity, applicable to Sobolev spaces.

Contribution

It demonstrates the differentiability of eigenfunctions of closures of differential operators with rational coefficients without prior assumptions, and establishes a one-to-one correspondence with solutions of the differential equation.

Findings

Eigenfunctions are differentiable up to order M.

One-to-one correspondence with solutions in C^M(R)∩L_k^2(R).

Regularity holds without assumptions on derivatives.

Abstract

In this paper, for an operator defined by the action of an M-th order differential operator with rational-type coefficients on the function space L_k^2(R):={f: measurable | \|f\|_k <\infty} with norm \|f\|_k^2:= \int |f(x)|^2 (x^2+1)^k dx (k \in Z), we prove the regularity (continuity and differentiability up to M times) of the eigenfunctions of its closure (with respect to the graph norm), except at singular points of the corresponding ordinary differential equation without any assumptions for the Sobolev space, i.e., without any assumptions about the m-th order derivatives of the eigenfunctions with m=1,2,.., M-1. (For the special case of k=0, we prove this regularity for the usual L^2(R).) Especially, we show a one-to-one correspondence between the eigenfunctions of its closure and the solutions in C^M(R)\cap L_k^2(R) of the corresponding differential equation under the condition above when there is no singular point for this differential equation. This one-to-one correspondence is shown in the basic framework of an algorithm proposed in our preceding paper, which can determine all solutions in C^M\cap L_k^2(R) of the ordinary differential equation then.