A laplace duality for integration
Abstract
We consider the integral v(y) = Ky f (x)dx on a domain Ky = {x R d\,: g(x) y}, where g is nonnegative and Ky is compact for all y [0, +). Under some assumptions, we show that for every y (0, ) there exists a distinguished scalar y (0, +) such that which is the counterpart analogue for integration of Lagrangian duality for optimization. A crucial ingredient is the Laplace transform, the analogue for integration of Legendre-Fenchel transform in optimization. In particular, if both f and g are positively homogeneous then y is a simple explicitly rational function of y. In addition if g is quadratic form then computing v(y) reduces to computing the integral of f with respect to a specific Gaussian measure for which exact and approximate numerical methods (e.g. cubatures) are available.
Cite
@article{arxiv.2502.20842,
title = {A laplace duality for integration},
author = {Jean B Lasserre},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2502.20842},
year = {2025}
}