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s19ac returns a value for the Kelvin function .

Syntax

C#
public static double s19ac(
	double x,
	out int ifail
)
Visual Basic
Public Shared Function s19ac ( _
	x As Double, _
	<OutAttribute> ByRef ifail As Integer _
) As Double
Visual C++
public:
static double s19ac(
	double x, 
	[OutAttribute] int% ifail
)
F#
static member s19ac : 
        x : float * 
        ifail : int byref -> float 

Parameters

x
Type: System..::..Double
On entry: the argument  of the function.
Constraint: .
ifail
Type: System..::..Int32%
On exit:  unless the method detects an error or a warning has been flagged (see [Error Indicators and Warnings]).

Return Value

s19ac returns a value for the Kelvin function .

Description

s19ac evaluates an approximation to the Kelvin function .
Note:  for  the function is undefined and at  it is infinite so we need only consider .
The method is based on several Chebyshev expansions:
For ,
where ,  and  are expansions in the variable .
For ,
where  is an expansion in the variable .
For ,
where , and  and  are expansions in the variable .
When  is sufficiently close to zero, the result is computed as
and when  is even closer to zero, simply as .
For large ,  is asymptotically given by  and this becomes so small that it cannot be computed without underflow and the method fails.

References

Abramowitz M and Stegun I A (1972) Handbook of Mathematical Functions (3rd Edition) Dover Publications

Error Indicators and Warnings

Errors or warnings detected by the method:
On entry, x is too large: the result underflows. On failure, the method returns zero. See also the Users' Note for your implementation.
On entry, : the function is undefined. On failure the method returns zero.
An error occured, see message report.

Accuracy

Let  be the absolute error in the result,  be the relative error in the result and  be the relative error in the argument. If  is somewhat larger than the machine precision, then we have:
For very small , the relative error amplification factor is approximately given by , which implies a strong attenuation of relative error. However,  in general cannot be less than the machine precision.
For small , errors are damped by the function and hence are limited by the machine precision.
For medium and large , the error behaviour, like the function itself, is oscillatory, and hence only the absolute accuracy for the function can be maintained. For this range of , the amplitude of the absolute error decays like  which implies a strong attenuation of error. Eventually, , which asymptotically behaves like , becomes so small that it cannot be calculated without causing underflow, and the method returns zero. Note that for large  the errors are dominated by those of the standard function exp.

Parallelism and Performance

None.

Further Comments

Underflow may occur for a few values of  close to the zeros of , below the limit which causes a failure with .

Example

This example reads values of the argument  from a file, evaluates the function at each value of  and prints the results.

Example program (C#): s19ace.cs

Example program data: s19ace.d

Example program results: s19ace.r

See Also