An Integral Equation Method for Linear Two-Point Boundary Value Systems

Abstract

We present an integral equation-based method for the numerical solution of two-point boundary value systems. Special care is devoted to the mathematical formulation, namely the choice of the background Green's function that leads to a well-conditioned integral equation. We then make use of a high-order Nystrom discretization and a fast direct solver on the continuous level to obtain a black-box solver that is fast and accurate. A numerical study of the conditioning of different integral formulations is carried out. Excellent performance in speed, accuracy, and robustness is demonstrated with several challenging numerical examples.