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    Nørlund-Rice Integral

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    besty666
    The Nørlund–Rice integral relates the nth forward difference of a function to a line integral on the complex plane and has applications in finite differences, computer science, and graph theory. It is named after Niels Erik Nørlund, who defined the integral, and Stephen O. Rice, who demonstrated its utility. The integral allows asymptotic methods to evaluate series that are difficult to analyze directly as finite differences.

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    Nørlund-Rice Integral

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    besty666
    60 views3 pages
    The Nørlund–Rice integral relates the nth forward difference of a function to a line integral on the complex plane and has applications in finite differences, computer science, and graph theory. It is named after Niels Erik Nørlund, who defined the integral, and Stephen O. Rice, who demonstrated its utility. The integral allows asymptotic methods to evaluate series that are difficult to analyze directly as finite differences.

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    The Nørlund–Rice integral relates the nth forward difference of a function to a line integral on the complex plane and has applications in finite differences, computer science, and graph theory. It is named after Niels Erik Nørlund, who defined the integral, and Stephen O. Rice, who demonstrated its utility. The integral allows asymptotic methods to evaluate series that are difficult to analyze directly as finite differences.

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    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
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    60 views3 pages

    Nørlund-Rice Integral

    Uploaded by

    besty666
    The Nørlund–Rice integral relates the nth forward difference of a function to a line integral on the complex plane and has applications in finite differences, computer science, and graph theory. It is named after Niels Erik Nørlund, who defined the integral, and Stephen O. Rice, who demonstrated its utility. The integral allows asymptotic methods to evaluate series that are difficult to analyze directly as finite differences.

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    Nørlund–Rice integral

    In mathematics, the Nørlund–Rice integral, sometimes called Rice's method, relates the nth forward
    difference of a function to a line integral on the complex plane. It commonly appears in the theory of finite
    differences and has also been applied in computer science and graph theory to estimate binary tree lengths.
    It is named in honour of Niels Erik Nørlund and Stephen O. Rice. Nørlund's contribution was to define the
    integral; Rice's contribution was to demonstrate its utility by applying saddle-point techniques to its
    evaluation.

    Definition
    The nth forward difference of a function f(x) is given by

    where is the binomial coefficient.

    The Nörlund–Rice integral is given by

    where f is understood to be meromorphic, α is an integer, , and the contour of integration is


    understood to circle the poles located at the integers α, ..., n, but encircles neither integers 0, ..., nor
    any of the poles of f. The integral may also be written as

    where B(a,b) is the Euler beta function. If the function is polynomially bounded on the right hand side
    of the complex plane, then the contour may be extended to infinity on the right hand side, allowing the
    transform to be written as

    where the constant c is to the left of α.

    Poisson–Mellin–Newton cycle
    The Poisson–Mellin–Newton cycle, noted by Flajolet et al. in 1985, is the observation that the resemblance
    of the Nørlund–Rice integral to the Mellin transform is not accidental, but is related by means of the
    binomial transform and the Newton series. In this cycle, let be a sequence, and let g(t) be the
    corresponding Poisson generating function, that is, let

    Taking its Mellin transform

    one can then regain the original sequence by means of the Nörlund–Rice integral:

    where Γ is the gamma function.

    Riesz mean
    A closely related integral frequently occurs in the discussion of Riesz means. Very roughly, it can be said to
    be related to the Nörlund–Rice integral in the same way that Perron's formula is related to the Mellin
    transform: rather than dealing with infinite series, it deals with finite series.

    Utility
    The integral representation for these types of series is interesting because the integral can often be evaluated
    using asymptotic expansion or saddle-point techniques; by contrast, the forward difference series can be
    extremely hard to evaluate numerically, because the binomial coefficients grow rapidly for large n.

    See also
    Table of Newtonian series
    List of factorial and binomial topics

    References
    Niels Erik Nørlund, Vorlesungen uber Differenzenrechnung, (1954) Chelsea Publishing
    Company, New York.
    Donald E. Knuth, The Art of Computer Programming, (1973), Vol. 3 Addison-Wesley.
    Philippe Flajolet and Robert Sedgewick, "Mellin transforms and asymptotics: Finite
    differences and Rice's integrals (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/03043975
    9400281M)", Theoretical Computer Science 144 (1995) pp 101–124.
    Peter Kirschenhofer, "[1] (http://www.combinatorics.org/ojs/index.php/eljc/article/view/v3i2r7/
    pdf)", The Electronic Journal of Combinatorics (http://www.combinatorics.org), Volume 3
    (1996) Issue 2 Article 7.

    Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Nørlund–Rice_integral&oldid=958196734"

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