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There are well-known inequalities among the eigenvalues of Sturm-Liouville problems with periodic, semi-periodic, Dirichlet and Neumann boundary conditions. In this paper, for an arbitrary coupled self-adjoint boundary condition, we identify two separated boundary conditions corresponding to the Dirichlet and Neumann conditions in the classical case, and establish analogous inequalities. It is also well-known that the lowest periodic eigenvalue is simple; here we prove a similar result for the general case. Moreover, we show that the algebraic and geometric multiplicities of the eigenvalues of self-adjoint regular Sturm-Liouville problems with coupled boundary conditions are the same. An important step in our approach is to obtain a representation of the fundamental solutions for sufficiently negative values of the spectral parameter. Our approach yields the existence and boundedness from below of the eigenvalues of arbitrary self-adjoint regular Sturm-Liouville problems without using operator theory.

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