English

On a family of curious integrals suggested by Stellar Dynamics

Classical Analysis and ODEs 2019-12-02 v2

Abstract

While investigating the properties of a galaxy model used in Stellar Dynamics, a curious integral identity was discovered. For a special value of a parameter, the identity reduces to a definite integral with a very simple symbolic value; but, quite surprisingly, all the consulted tables of integrals, and computer algebra systems, do not seem aware of this result. Here I show that this result is a special case (n=0n=0 and z=1z=1) of the following identity (established by elementary methods): In(z)01K(k)k(z+k2)n+3/2dk=(2)n(2n+1)!!dndznArcCotzz(z+1),z>0, I_n(z)\equiv\int_0^1{{\rm K}(k) k\over (z+k^2)^{n+3/2}}dk = {(-2)^n\over (2n+1)!!} {d^n\over dz^n} {{\rm ArcCot}\sqrt{z}\over\sqrt{z(z+1)}},\quad z>0, where n=0,1,2,3...n=0,1,2,3..., and K(k){\rm K}(k) is the complete elliptic integral of first kind.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1911.10480,
  title  = {On a family of curious integrals suggested by Stellar Dynamics},
  author = {Luca Ciotti},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1911.10480},
  year   = {2019}
}

Comments

4 pages, no figures - Corrected a typo in eq. (8)