English

A laplace duality for integration

Optimization and Control 2025-05-07 v3

Abstract

We consider the integral v(y) = Ky f (x)dx on a domain Ky = {x \in R d\,: g(x) \le y}, where g is nonnegative and Ky is compact for all y \in [0, +\infty). Under some assumptions, we show that for every y \in (0, \infty) there exists a distinguished scalar λ\lambday \in (0, +\infty) 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 λ\lambday 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}
}
R2 v1 2026-06-28T22:01:29.195Z