A3.17
Part II, 2002
(i) State the Fredholm alternative for Fredholm integral equations of the second kind.
Show that the integral equation
where is a continuous function, has a unique solution for if . Derive this solution.
(ii) Describe the WKB method for finding approximate solutions of the equation
where is an arbitrary non-zero, differentiable function and is a small parameter. Obtain these solutions in terms of an exponential with slowly varying exponent and slowly varying amplitude.
Hence, by means of a suitable change of independent variable, find approximate solutions of the equation
in , where is a large parameter.