



so the characteristic solution is

As a guess for the particular solution, let's back up a bit. The reason the choice of 

 works for the characteristic solution is that, in the background, we're employing the substitution 

, so that 

 is getting replaced with a new function 

. Differentiating yields


Now the ODE in terms of 

 is linear with constant coefficients, since the coefficients 

 and 

 will cancel, resulting in the ODE

Of coursesin, the characteristic equation will be 

, which leads to solutions 

, as before.
Now that we have two linearly independent solutions, we can easily find more via variation of parameters. If 

 are the solutions to the characteristic equation of the ODE in terms of 

, then we can find another of the form 

 where


where 

 is the Wronskian of the two characteristic solutions. We have






and recalling that 

, we have
