Limits of Sturm–Liouville eigenvalues when the interval shrinks to an end point

Abstract

We investigate the behaviour of the eigenvalues of a self-adjoint Sturm–Liouville problem with a separated boundary condition when the interval of the problem shrinks to an end point. It is shown that all the eigenvalues, except possibly the first, approach limit. For the remaining choices of the boundary condition, several types of condition on the coefficient functions are given, so that the first eigenvalue has a finite or infinite limit and, when the limit is finite, an explicit expression for the limit is obtained. Moreover, numerous examples are presented to illustrate these results, and a construction is given to perturb the finite-limit case to the no-limit case.