Copyright © 2009 Werner Kratz. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Abstract

We consider eigenvalue problems for self-adjoint Sturm-Liouville difference equations of any even order. It is well known that such problems with Dirichlet boundary conditions can be transformed into an algebraic eigenvalue problem for a banded, real-symmetric matrix, and vice versa. In this article it is shown that such a transform exists for general separated, self-adjoint boundary conditions also. But the main result is an explicit procedure (algorithm) for the numerical computation of this banded, real-symmetric matrix. This construction can be used for numerical purposes, since in the recent paper by Kratz and Tentler (2008) there is given a stable and superfast algorithm to compute the eigenvalues of banded, real-symmetric matrices. Hence, the Sturm-Liouville problems considered here may now be treated by this algorithm.