Green's Functions for Stieltjes Boundary Problems

Stieltjes boundary problems generalize the customary class of well-posed two-point boundary value problems in three independent directions, regarding the specification of the boundary conditions: (1) They allow more than two evaluation points. (2) They allow derivatives of arbitrary order. (3) Global terms in the form of definite integrals are allowed. Assuming the Stieltjes boundary problem is regular (a unique solution exists for every forcing function), there are symbolic methods for computing the associated Green's operator.

In the classical case of well-posed two-point boundary value problems, it is known how to transform the Green's operator into the so-called Green's function, the representation usually preferred by physicists and engineers. In this paper we extend this transformation to the whole class of Stieltjes boundary problems. It turns out that the extension (1) leads to more case distinction, (2) implies ill-posed problems and hence distributional terms, (3) has apparently no effect on the structure of the Green's function.