Transfer Matrices and Green Functions for the study of elementary excitations in multilayered heterostructures

This article is concerned with a mathematical tool, the Associated Transfer Matrix T, which proves useful in the study of a wide class of physical problems involving multilayer heterostructures. General properties of linear, second order differential matrix Sturm Liouville operators are discussed as a basis for establishing general properties of T, which is also generally related to the Green function G. Some identities satisfied by T are derived, which prove useful in practice to monitor the numerical quality of computational processes.