Paper 2, Section II, A
Part IA, 2011
(a) The circumference of an ellipse with semi-axes 1 and is given by
Setting , find the first three terms in a series expansion of around .
(b) Euler proved that also satisfies the differential equation
Use the substitution for to find a differential equation for , where . Show that this differential equation has regular singular points at and .
Show that the indicial equation at has a repeated root, and find the recurrence relation for the coefficients of the corresponding power-series solution. State the form of a second, independent solution.
Verify that the power-series solution is consistent with your answer in (a).