Tuesday, October 22, 2013

9.9, or the end of a very long, very fulfilling chapter.

Section 9.9 is entitled “Inhomogeneous Linear Systems.”

Inhomogeneous systems have the form y’ = A(t)y + f(t). As before, A is an n × n matrix, y is a column vector for our unknown functions, and f is a column vector of known functions. Recall that it is the f that makes this system inhomogeneous (it’s sometimes called the forcing term).

There’s a theorem, but I’m not going to directly quote it because I know exactly how to say it: The general solution to the inhomogeneous linear system is of the form y = yp + yh, where yp is your particular solution and yh is the homogeneous solution y’ = A(t)y. In other words, the general solution of the inhomogeneous system is y = yp + C1y1 + C2y2 + … + Cnyn. As they always are, the C’s are arbitrary constants.

If we have a fundamental set of solutions y1, y2,…, and yn to the homogeneous system y’ = Ay, then we could form an n × n matrix Y that contains all these solutions. Thus

This matrix is called a fundamental matrix because its columns form the fundamental set of solutions for the system y’ = Ay.

Here’s a proposition concerning this new information: “A matrix-valued function Y(t) is a fundamental matrix for the system y’ = Ay if and only if…” (445)

An example of a fundamental matrix for y’ = Ay is the exponential etA.

Do you remember the variation of parameters thing we did back in the day of single equations? (If not here’s a recap for you: http://differentialequationsjourney.blogspot.com/2013/09/super-serious-and-not-so-funny-linear.html.) For this, we’ll be looking for a solution of the form yp(t) = Y(t)v(t). In this case, v(t) is a column vector of functions yet to be determined, and Y(t) is the fundamental matrix. I’m going to just state the theorem and skip the derivation, but if you want to know exactly where this came from, I’d suggest looking http://www.mth.msu.edu/~sen/math_235/lectures/lec_20.pdf or http://www.ams.sunysb.edu/~jiao/teaching/ams501_fall11/notes/nonhomo_systems.pdfThey use different variables and they have a few things stated differently than the textbook I have, but it’ll get the job done.

Anyway, the theorem: “Suppose that A is a real n × n matrix and that Y(t) is a fundamental matrix for the system y’ = Ay. Let f(t) be a vector-valued function. Then the solution to the initial value problem

is given by [the following equation]” (447).

The next section is concerning undetermined coefficients. The funny thing about this section is that it references Chapter 4 (which we technically haven’t covered yet) and then gives an example. It has no directions, no outline, or any sort of explanation. After researching on the internet, I have found that this method is used primarily for second-order differential equations (which I thought was to be the case, considering that Chapter 4 details second-order differential equations, which we know because of one of our many bonus sections). I’ll leave a webpage here for the explanation but until we cover it (which we will) I’m thinking we might be glossing over it for now: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Method_of_undetermined_coefficients#Description_of_the_method

One final thing to leave you with for this fine chapter: computing the exponential. Originally, we used the exponential to find the fundamental set of solutions. Now we’re using the fundamental set of solutions to find the exponential of the matrix (funny how things work out, isn’t it?).

The proposition for this is as follows: “Suppose that Y is a fundamental matrix for the system y’ = Ay. Then the exponential etA can be computed as

where Y0 = Y(0)” (450).

Here are some other websites that may or may not help you in the subject of inhomogeneous systems: http://tutorial.math.lamar.edu/Classes/DE/NonhomogeneousSystems.aspx and http://people.math.gatech.edu/~xchen/teach/ode/NonhomoSys.pdf

Other than that, here’s the end of chapter 9. A bit bittersweet, don’t you think?

I don’t. Two more chapters! Twelve more sections! Yay differential equations! :D


I’ll meet you in chapter 4 (again).

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