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Solving The Radial Part of The Laplacian Equation Using The Method of Frobenius

This document discusses solving the radial part of the Laplacian equation using the method of Frobenius. It begins with the differential equation and recognizes it can be solved using Frobenius' method. This involves using a trial solution as an infinite series with undetermined coefficients. Substituting this into the original equation results in another equation involving the coefficients. Setting the lowest exponent term to zero gives the indicial equation, with solutions of l and -(l+1). The recursion relation then shows that all coefficients after the first term are zero, resulting in the simple solution of y = Ax^l + Bx^-(l+1).

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44 views1 page

Solving The Radial Part of The Laplacian Equation Using The Method of Frobenius

This document discusses solving the radial part of the Laplacian equation using the method of Frobenius. It begins with the differential equation and recognizes it can be solved using Frobenius' method. This involves using a trial solution as an infinite series with undetermined coefficients. Substituting this into the original equation results in another equation involving the coefficients. Setting the lowest exponent term to zero gives the indicial equation, with solutions of l and -(l+1). The recursion relation then shows that all coefficients after the first term are zero, resulting in the simple solution of y = Ax^l + Bx^-(l+1).

Uploaded by

FayazKhanPathan
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd

SOLVING THE RADIAL PART OF THE LAPLACIAN EQUATION USING THE

METHOD OF FROBENIUS

We begin with the equation:


x 2 y + 2 xy l (l + 1) y = 0

(1)

We recognize this as a differential equation that we can solve using the method of
Frobenius, so we use a trial solution of:

y = an x n+r

(2)

n=0

and substitute into (1). Doing so we obtain:

(n + r )(n + r 1)a
n =0

x n + r + 2 (n + r )a n x n + r l (l + 1) a n x n + r = 0 (3)
n =0

n =0

We first establish the indicial equation which will determine for us the values of r for this
equation that will appear in the solution expressed in (2). We find the indicial equation
by setting n to zero in all the sums of (3) that bear the lowest exponent of x. Since all the
sums in (3) are to the same power of x (i.e, xn+r), all the sums contribute to the indicial
equation and we obtain:
r (r 1) + 2r l (l + 1) = 0 r 2 + r (l 2 + l ) = (r 2 l 2 ) + (r l ) = (r l )(r + l + 1) = 0
r = l; l 1
Thus, the solutions to the indicial equation are l and (l+1).
We next find the recursion relation. Note that since all the sums already involve the same
exponent of x, there is no need to do any re-indexing. That means that all the coefficients
will remain expressed as an , and so we can write immediately:

[(n + r )(n + r 1) + 2(n + r ) l (l + 1)]a n = 0

(4)

Eq. (4) tells us that either the bracketed expression vanishes or the value of an vanishes.
We know that the method of Frobenius produces a series where the first non zero term is
a0, and we know that the bracketed expression vanishes for n=0; this is how we obtained
the indicial equation. However, for any other value of n, the bracketed expression cannot
vanish, meaning that an = 0 for all values of n > 1. This means the only term in the series
expansion is the a0 term, so our solution for eq. (1) becomes simply:
y = Ax l + Bx ( l +1)

(5)

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