On a Modification of Olver’s Method: A Special Case

Abstract

We consider the asymptotic method designed by Olver (Asymptotics and special functions. Academic Press, New York, 1974) for linear differential equations of the second order containing a large (asymptotic) parameter $\Lambda$: $x^my''-\Lambda ^2y=g(x)y$, with $m\in \mathbb {Z}$ and g continuous. Olver studies in detail the cases $m\ne 2$, especially the cases $m=0, \pm 1$, giving the Poincaré-type asymptotic expansions of two independent solutions of the equation. The case $m=2$ is different, as the behavior of the solutions for large $\Lambda$ is not of exponential type, but of power type. In this case, Olver’s theory does not give many details. We consider here the special case $m=2$. We propose two different techniques to handle the problem: (1) a modification of Olver’s method that replaces the role of the exponential approximations by power approximations, and (2) the transformation of the differential problem into a fixed point problem from which we construct an asymptotic sequence of functions that converges to the unique solution of the problem. Moreover, we show that this second technique may also be applied to nonlinear differential equations with a large parameter.