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Homework Statement
I was talking with my maths lecturer about how he knew certain special differential equations such as y'' = y has only y = e^x + e^-x as a possible solution. I understand the superposition principle but not why only y = e^x satisfies the DE. Why can't there be some other functions which also satisfy it, even if we can't think of any at the moment?
He simply referred me to Picard's existence theorem, which I found here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Picard–Lindelöf_theorem
but I don't get it at all. Is this something that can be understood without having to read through advanced calculus proofs?
Homework Equations
Picard's existence theorem