English

Self-adjoint extensions of symmetric relations associated with systems of ordinary differential equations with distributional coefficients

Spectral Theory 2026-02-11 v1 Mathematical Physics Classical Analysis and ODEs math.MP

Abstract

We study the extension theory for the two-dimensional first-order system Ju+qu=wfJu' +qu = wf of differential equations on the real interval (a,b)(a,b) where JJ is a constant, invertible, skew-hermitian matrix and qq and ww are matrices whose entries are real distributions of order 00 with qq hermitian and ww non-negative. Specifically, we characterize the boundary conditions for solutions uu in the closure of the minimal relation, as well as describe the properties of quasi-boundary conditions which yield self-adjoint extensions. We then apply these ideas to a popular extension of non-negative minimal relations: the Krein-von Neumann extension. For more context on how the Krein-von Neumann is defined, an appendix shows a construction of the Friedrichs extension from which the Krein-von Neumann is traditionally defined.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2602.09152,
  title  = {Self-adjoint extensions of symmetric relations associated with systems of ordinary differential equations with distributional coefficients},
  author = {Steven Redolfi and Rudi Weikard},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2602.09152},
  year   = {2026}
}