On self-adjoint boundary conditions for singular Sturm-Liouville operators bounded from below

We extend the classical boundary values begin{align*} & g(a) = - W(u_{a}(lambda_0,.), g)(a) = lim_{x downarrow a} frac{g(x)}{hat u_{a}(lambda_0,x)}, &g^{[1]}(a) = (p g)(a) = W(hat u_{a}(lambda_0,.), g)(a) = lim_{x downarrow a} frac{g(x) - g(a) hat u_{a}(lambda_0,x)}{u_{a}(lambda_0,x)} end{align*} for regular Sturm-Liouville operators associated with differential expressions of the type $tau = r(x)^{-1}[-(d/dx)p(x)(d/dx) + q(x)]$ for a.e. $xin[a,b] subset mathbb{R}$, to the case where $tau$ is singular on $(a,b) subseteq mathbb{R}$ and the associated minimal operator $T_{min}$ is bounded from below. Here $u_a(lambda_0, cdot)$ and $hat u_a(lambda_0, cdot)$ denote suitably normalized principal and nonprincipal solutions of $tau u = lambda_0 u$ for appropriate $lambda_0 in mathbb{R}$, respectively. We briefly discuss the singular Weyl-Titchmarsh-Kodaira $m$-function and finally illustrate the theory in some detail with the examples of the Bessel, Legendre, and Kummer (resp., Laguerre) operators.