Re: SphericalHarmonics strange behavior
- To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
- Subject: [mg100985] Re: [mg100961] SphericalHarmonics strange behavior
- From: Luke Bloy <lbloy at seas.upenn.edu>
- Date: Fri, 19 Jun 2009 20:46:19 -0400 (EDT)
- References: <20090619072555.HPEMD.390879.imail@eastrmwml39>
Hi Bob,
With some additional investigation yesterday I tracked the problem to
the LegendreP and while i agree there is also a precision issue(which is
discussed in some other bugs online), there seems to be an actual bug in
the legendreP code dealing with negative m values. This bug is exposed
when working with machine precision numbers. For example.
LegendreP[1, 1, Cos[Pi/7]] // N
Returns -0.433884
LegendreP[1, -1, Cos[Pi/7]] // N
should be -1/2 LegendreP[1, 1, Cos[Pi/7]] = 0.216942
This is what is returned by
LegendreP[1, -1, Cos[Pi/7]] // N
However,
LegendreP[1, -1, Cos[Pi/7.]] // N
returns -0.216942
So it seems like the (-1)^m sign convention is not present in the
machine precision routine that is run.
-Luke
Bob Hanlon wrote:
> It's a precision issue
>
> diffY[l_, m_, t_, p_] :=
> Module[{val1, val2},
> val1 = SphericalHarmonicY[l, m, t, p];
> val2 = Sqrt[(2*l + 1) (l - m)!/(4*Pi (l + m)!)]*
> LegendreP[l, m, Cos[t]]*E^(I*m*p);
> Abs[val1 - val2]];
>
> th1 = 1.324;
> ph1 = 5.231;
>
> {diffY[1, 1, th1, ph1], diffY[1, -1, th1, ph1]} //
> Chop
>
> {0,0.670051}
>
> th1 = 1.324`20;
> ph1 = 5.231`20;
>
> {diffY[1, 1, th1, ph1], diffY[1, -1, th1, ph1]} //
> Chop
>
> {0,0}
>
> Your definition would need to include an option for setting the working precision.
>
>
> Bob Hanlon
>
> ---- "lbloy at seas.upenn.edu" <lbloy at seas.upenn.edu> wrote:
>
> =============
> Hi all,
>
> working with some spherical harmonics and have some questions about the code as implemented in mathematica.
>
> based on http://mathworld.wolfram.com/SphericalHarmonic.html
>
> I put together the following code to see what is implemented
>
> th1 = 1.324;
> ph1 = 5.231;
>
> diffY[l_, m_, t_, p_] :=
> Module[{val1, val2}, val1 = SphericalHarmonicY[l, m, t, p];
> val2 =
> Sqrt[((2*l + 1)*(l - m)!)/((4*Pi)*(l + m)!)]*
> LegendreP[l, m, Cos[t]]*E^(I*m*p);
> Print[{val1, val2, Abs[val1 - val2]}];
> Return[Abs[val1 - val2]]; ];
>
> diffY[1, 1, th1, ph1]
>
> diffY[1, -1, th1, ph1]
>
> Clearly there is some sign error somewhere I was wondering if anyone had any suggestions.
>
> thanks
> Luke
>
>
>