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Spherical Harmonic

  • To: mathgroup at yoda.ncsa.uiuc.edu
  • Subject: Spherical Harmonic
  • From: prs at cook.whoi.edu (Peter R. Shaw)
  • Date: Thu, 20 Sep 90 10:33:48 EDT

Hi, folks,

I'm using spherical harmonics ...
I want to access Ylm for l=2, m=0. No azimuthal dependence,
so I set phi=0, and want to look at the theta dependence.

So, when I type:
SphericalHarmonicY[2,0,theta,0]

I get the satisfying result:
                          2
Sqrt[5] (-1 + 3 Cos[theta] )
----------------------------
         4 Sqrt[Pi]

BUT, when I try to access theta=0, what I get is
SphericalHarmonicY[2,0,0,0]
                                        0
General::ind: Indeterminate expression 0  encountered.

 0
0  Sqrt[5]
----------
2 Sqrt[Pi]

Am I nuts or what? Cos[0]=1, so Cos[theta]^2 = 1,
so I should get
Sqrt[5] (-1 + 3 )  
------------------
   4 Sqrt[Pi]

which evaluates to 1/2 Sqrt[5/Pi], and does not
involve anything like 0^0. None of the constants
are dependent on theta.

---------------------------------------------
Peter R. Shaw    pshaw at aqua.whoi.edu
Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
---------------------------------------------



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