Asymptotic Bessel-function expansions for Legendre and Jacobi functions

We present new asymptotic series for the Legendre and Jacobi functions of the first and second kinds in terms of Bessel functions with appropriate arguments. The results are useful in the context of scattering problems, improve on known limiting results, and allow the calculation of corrections to the leading Bessel-function approximations for these functions. Our derivations of these series are based on Barnes-type representations of the Legendre, Jacobi, and Bessel functions; our method appears to be new. We use the results, finally, to obtain asymptotic Bessel function expansions for the rotation functions needed to describe the scattering of particles with spin.