An ubiquitous three-term recurrence relation

Abstract

We solve an eigenvalue equation that appears in several papers about a wide range of physical problems. The Frobenius method leads to a three-term recurrence relation for the coefficients of the power series that, under suitable truncation, yields exact analytical eigenvalues and eigenfunctions for particular values of a model parameter. From these solutions, some researchers have derived a variety of predictions such as allowed angular frequencies, allowed field intensities, and the like. We also solve the eigenvalue equation numerically by means of the variational Rayleigh-Ritz method and compare the resulting eigenvalues with those provided by the truncation condition. In this way, we prove that those physical predictions are merely artifacts of the truncation condition.