## Inverse of discrete second derivative operator

Hi guys,

I have a problem solving the following exercise:

We consider the boundary value problem :

$y''(x)=-f(x)$
$y(0)=y(1)=0$.

This can be solved by direct integration and with some extra calculus (inverting the order of integration of a double integral) the solution can be written with the Green's function $G(x,\xi)$ of the problem:

$y(x)=\int_0^1G(x,\xi)f(\xi)d\xi$ with $G(x,\xi)=min(x,\xi)[1-max(x,\xi)]$

I have a problem when I consider the discrete version of the problem. It can be obtained using the central difference formula for y'':

$y''(x) \approx \frac{y(x+h) - 2 y(x) + y(x-h)}{h^{2}}$. By doing this, we find the associated discrete problem: a linear system $Ay=f$.

$A$ is a $N \times N$ ( $N+2$being the number of points of the discretization) tridiagonal matrix with 2 on main diagonal, and -1 on both diagonal above and below the main diagonal.

The problem here is to calculate $A^{-1}$. The only hint I have is that I should get inspiration from the continuous case... The professor gave us the answer : $(A^{-1})_{ij}=min(i,j)((N+1)-max(i,j))$. It looks like the Green's function but I have absolutely no idea on how to find this !