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Solving systems of linear differential equations using matrix exponentials ... These notes grew out of courses taught by the author at Stanford University.
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These notes grew out of courses taught by the author at Stanford University
during the period of 2006 – 2009. The material is all classical. The author is
grateful to Messrs. Chad Groft, Michael Eichmair, and Jesse Gell-Redman,
who served as course assistants during that time.
vii
A di↵erential equation is an equation which relates the derivatives of an
unknown function to the unknown function itself and known quantities. We
distinguish two basic types of di↵erential equations: An ordinary di↵erential
equation is a di↵erential equation for an unknown function which depends on
a single variable (usually denoted by t and referred to as time). By contrast,
if the unknown function depends on two or more variables, the equation
is a partial di↵erential equation. In this text, we will restrict ourselves to
ordinary di↵erential equations, as the theory of partial di↵erential equations
is considerably more di cult.
Perhaps the simplest example of an ordinary di↵erential equation is the
equation
(1) x
0 (t) = a x(t),
where x(t) is a real-valued function and a is a constant. This is an example
of a linear di↵erential equation of first order. Its general solution is described
in the following proposition:
Proposition 1.1. A function x(t) is a solution of (1) if and only if x(t) =
c e
at for some constant c.
Proof. Let x(t) be an arbitrary solution of (1). Then
d
dt
(e