Calculus of variations
- To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
- Subject: [mg20072] Calculus of variations
- From: "William F. Campbell" <valentin at wam.umd.edu>
- Date: Wed, 29 Sep 1999 03:33:28 -0400
- Organization: UMD Dept. of Meteorology
- Sender: owner-wri-mathgroup at wolfram.com
Are there any good books, or freely-available Mathematica notebooks, dealing
with the calculus of variations? In particular, I am trying to solve
the following type of problem: given two functions of a single
variable f1[x] and f2[x], which are 0 almost everywhere, find the
value of x0 such that Integrate[(f1[x]-f2[x+x0])^2,{x,-infinity,
infinity}] is minimized. I don't think that this problem can be cast
into "standard" Lagrangian form, but I haven't made a serious attempt.
Bill Campbell