On the numerical treatment of the eigenparameter dependent boundary conditions

In this paper, we consider the numerical treatment of singular eigenvalue problems supplied with eigenparameter dependent boundary conditions using spectral methods. On the one hand, such boundary conditions hinder the construction of test and trial space functions which could incorporate them and thus providing well-conditioned Galerkin discretization matrices. On the other hand, they can generate surprising behavior of the eigenvectors hardly detected by analytic methods. These singular problems are often indirectly approximated by regular ones. We argue that spectral collocation as well as tau method offer remedies for the first two issues and provide direct and efficient treatment to such problems. On a finite domain, we consider the so-called Petterson-König’s rod eigenvalue problem and on the half line, we take into account the Charney’s baroclinic stability problem and the Fourier eigenvalue problem. One boundary condition in these problems depends on the eigenparameter and additionally, this also could depend on some physical parameters. The Chebyshev collocation based on both, square and rectangular differentiation and a Chebyshev tau method are used to discretize the first problem. All these schemes cast the problems into singular algebraic generalized eigenvalue ones which are solved by the QZ and/or Arnoldi algorithms as well as by some target oriented Jacobi-Davidson methods. Thus, the spurious eigenvalues are completely eliminated. The accuracy of square Chebyshev collocation is roughly estimated and its order of approximation with respect to the eigenvalue of interest is determined. For the problems defined on the half line, we make use of the Laguerre-Gauss-Radau collocation. The method proved to be reliable, accurate, and stable with respect to the order of approximation and the scaling parameter.