Substituting $it+\ln t$ with $u$ in challenging integration procedure

46 Views Asked by At

Regarding this post

I would like to ask the community for hints regarding this problem. Since the steps done on that original post, did not yield the correct result, I have done a different approach.

\begin{equation} \int_0^\infty \frac{\sin t}{\sqrt{t}}dt=\frac{1}{2i}\int_0^\infty \frac{e^{it}-e^{-it}}{\sqrt{t}}dt \end{equation}

for simplicity we split in two integrals, and solve the first here, which gives the solution to the second too

\begin{equation} \frac{1}{2i}\int_0^\infty \frac{e^{it}}{\sqrt{t}}dt=\frac{1}{2i}\int_0^\infty e^{\frac{1}{2}\ln t}e^{it}dt=\frac{1}{2i}\int_0^\infty e^{{\frac{1}{2}\ln t}+it}dt \end{equation}

So we want to solve this now,

\begin{equation} \frac{1}{2i}\int_0^\infty e^{{\frac{1}{2}\ln t}+it}dt \end{equation}

and it is tempting to set $u=\frac{1}{2}\ln t+it$, but then $du=\frac{1}{2t}+i$, so we can't get rid of that $t$ in the substitution.

Alternatively, we can write $e^{it}=z$, and form the complex integral

\begin{equation} \frac{1}{2i}\int_0^\infty \sqrt{t}z dz \end{equation}

But here we need to change the t-variable into a complex variable. So I suggest doing a Möbius transformation on of t, but since it is real, it doesn't apply.

Is there any chance here to solve this by some other way, or use this with some modifications?

2

There are 2 best solutions below

1
On BEST ANSWER

The first thing I should do is to simplify the problem using $t=x^2$ $$I=\frac{1}{2i}\int \frac{e^{it}-e^{-it}}{\sqrt{t}}\,dt=-\frac i 2\int \left(e^{i x^2}-e^{-i x^2}\right)\,dx$$ which are quite standard since $$\int e^{a x^2}\,dx=\frac{\sqrt{\pi } }{2 \sqrt{a}}\text{erfi}\left(x\sqrt{a} \right)$$ where appears the imaginary error function (which is not elementary).

So $$I=-i\frac { \sqrt \pi} 4\Bigg[\frac{\text{erfi}\left(x\sqrt{i} \right)}{\sqrt{i}} -\frac{\text{erfi}\left(x\sqrt{-i} \right)}{\sqrt{-i}} \Bigg]$$

0
On

Another more elegant approach uses the substitution $u=\sqrt{t}$, which gives

$$ \int_0^\infty\frac{\sin(t)}{\sqrt{t}}dt=2 \int_0^\infty\sin(u^2)du. $$

According to this the righthand side is the limit of Fresnel integrals and is convergent. The limit can be found as explained there.