Paper 2, Section II, A

Asymptotic Methods
Part II, 2019

(a) Define formally what it means for a real valued function f(x)f(x) to have an asymptotic expansion about x0x_{0}, given by

f(x)n=0fn(xx0)n as xx0f(x) \sim \sum_{n=0}^{\infty} f_{n}\left(x-x_{0}\right)^{n} \text { as } x \rightarrow x_{0}

Use this definition to prove the following properties.

(i) If both f(x)f(x) and g(x)g(x) have asymptotic expansions about x0x_{0}, then h(x)=f(x)+g(x)h(x)=f(x)+g(x) also has an asymptotic expansion about x0.x_{0} .

(ii) If f(x)f(x) has an asymptotic expansion about x0x_{0} and is integrable, then

x0xf(ξ)dξn=0fnn+1(xx0)n+1 as xx0\int_{x_{0}}^{x} f(\xi) d \xi \sim \sum_{n=0}^{\infty} \frac{f_{n}}{n+1}\left(x-x_{0}\right)^{n+1} \text { as } x \rightarrow x_{0}

(b) Obtain, with justification, the first three terms in the asymptotic expansion as xx \rightarrow \infty of the complementary error function, erfc(x)\operatorname{erfc}(x), defined as

erfc(x):=12πxet2dt\operatorname{erfc}(x):=\frac{1}{\sqrt{2 \pi}} \int_{x}^{\infty} e^{-t^{2}} d t