English

An integral that counts the zeros of a function

Classical Analysis and ODEs 2019-02-19 v2

Abstract

Given a real function ff on an interval [a,b][a,b] satisfying mild regularity conditions, we determine the number of zeros of ff by evaluating a certain integral. The integrand depends on f,ff, f' and ff''. In particular, by approximating the integral with the trapezoidal rule on a fine enough grid, we can compute the number of zeros of ff by evaluating finitely many values of f,ff,f' and ff''. A variant of the integral even allows to determine the number of the zeros broken down by their multiplicity.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1808.09690,
  title  = {An integral that counts the zeros of a function},
  author = {Norbert Hungerbühler and Micha Wasem},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1808.09690},
  year   = {2019}
}

Comments

20 pages, 1 figure, final version

R2 v1 2026-06-23T03:47:35.956Z