Numerics on wild oscillating functions

In summary, the conversation discusses how to accurately compute functions with intense oscillations, specifically the integral of sin(x^2). The suggested method is to split the integral into two parts and integrate each part separately, with the second part being integrated period by period. The use of integration by parts to increase convergence is also mentioned.
  • #1
Theia
122
1
Hello!

I'd like to ask for a help about how to compute accurately functions which has very intense oscillations. My example is to estimate

\(\displaystyle I = \int_0^{\infty} \sin(x^2) dx= \int_0^{\infty}\frac{\sin(t)}{2\sqrt{t}} dt\).I tried trapezoid rule over one oscillation at a time, but result is poor. My next though is to collect positive parts and negative parts together and add them later on in the code...

Any comments?

Thank you!
 
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  • #2
Theia said:
Hello!

I'd like to ask for a help about how to compute accurately functions which has very intense oscillations. My example is to estimate

\(\displaystyle I = \int_0^{\infty} \sin(x^2) dx= \int_0^{\infty}\frac{\sin(t)}{2\sqrt{t}} dt\).I tried trapezoid rule over one oscillation at a time, but result is poor. My next though is to collect positive parts and negative parts together and add them later on in the code...

Any comments?

Thank you!

I think integrating to infinity is typically unstable, isn't it?
So we should probably split the integral in two parts to eliminate infinity.
That is:
$$I = \int_0^{\infty} \sin(x^2)\,dx = \int_0^{\sqrt{2\pi}} \sin(x^2)\, dx + \int_0^{1/\sqrt{2\pi}} u^{-2}\sin(u^{-2})\, du$$
Perhaps we can integrate the second integral period by period now?
 
  • #3
Thank you! I computed first

\(\displaystyle \int_0^{2\pi}\frac{\sin t}{2\sqrt{t}}\),

and then the improper part by using integration by parts to increase \(\displaystyle \sqrt{t}\) to \(\displaystyle \sqrt{t^3}\) to obtain faster convergence.
 

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