Name: Ayman Ibrahim Mansour Ali

Number: 113
Sec: 4
Legendre Equation:-
In mathematics, Legendre's equation is the Diophantine equation:-

ax2 + by2 + cz2 = 0.

The equation is named for Adrien Marie Legendre who proved in 1785 that it is solvable in integers x, y, z, not all zero, if and
only if −bc, −ca and −ab are quadratic residues modulo a, b and c, respectively, where a, b, c are nonzero, squarefree,
pairwise relatively prime integers, not all positive or all negative.
Legendre Polynomial
In mathematics, Legendre functions are solutions to Legendre's differential equation

This ordinary differential equation is frequently encountered in physics and other technical fields. In particular, it occurs when
solving Laplace's equation (and related partial differential equations) in spherical coordinates.

The Legendre differential equation may be solved using the standard power series method. The equation has regular singular
points at x = ±1 so, in general, a series solution about the origin will only converge for |x| < 1. When n is an integer, the
solution Pn(x) that is regular at x = 1 is also regular at x = −1, and the series for this solution terminates (i.e. is a polynomial).

These solutions for n = 0, 1, 2, ... (with the normalization Pn(1) = 1) form a polynomial sequence of orthogonal polynomials
called the Legendre polynomials. Each Legendre polynomial Pn(x) is an nth-degree polynomial. It may be expressed using
Rodrigues' formula:

That these polynomials satisfy the Legendre differential equation (1) follows by differentiating (n+1) times both sides of the
identity

and employing the general Leibniz rule for repeated differentiation. The Pn can also be defined as the coefficients in a Taylor
series expansion:

In physics, this generating function is the basis for multipole expansions.

Associated Legendre function
In mathematics, the associated Legendre functions are the canonical solutions of the general Legendre equation

or

where the indices ℓ and m (which in general are complex quantities) are referred to as the degree and order of the associated
Legendre function respectively. This equation has nonzero solutions that are nonsingular on *−1, 1+ only if ℓ and m are
integers with 0 ≤ m ≤ ℓ, or with trivially equivalent negative values. When in addition m is even, the function is a polynomial.
When m is zero and ℓ integer, these functions are identical to the Legendre polynomials. In general, when ℓ and m are
integers, the regular solutions are sometimes called "associated Legendre polynomials", even though they are not
polynomials when m is odd. The fully general class of functions with arbitrary real or complex values of ℓ and m are
sometimes called "generalized Legendre functions", or just "Legendre functions". In that case the parameters are usually
labelled with Greek letters.

The Legendre ordinary differential equation is frequently encountered in physics and other technical fields. In particular, it
occurs when solving Laplace's equation (and related partial differential equations) in spherical coordinates. Associated
Legendre functions play a vital role in the definition of spherical harmonics.
Definition for non-negative integer parameters ℓ and m:

These functions are denoted , where the superscript indicates the order, and not a power of P. Their most
straightforward definition is in terms of derivatives of ordinary Legendre polynomials (m ≥ 0)

The ( − 1)m factor in this formula is known as the Condon–Shortley phase. Some authors omit it. That the functions described
by this equation satisfy the general Legendre differential equation with the indicated values of the parameters ℓ and m
follows by differentiating m times the Legendre equation for Pℓ:

Moreover, since by Rodrigues' formula,

the Pmℓ can be expressed in the form

This equation allows extension of the range of m to: −ℓ ≤ m ≤ ℓ. The definitions of Pℓ±m, resulting from this expression by
substitution of ±m, are proportional. Indeed, equate the coefficients of equal powers on the left and right hand side of

Then it follows that the proportionality constant is

So that
Recursive Definition
Expanding the Taylor series in equation (1) for the first two terms gives

for the first two Legendre Polynomials. To obtain further terms without resorting to direct expansion of the Taylor series,
equation (1) is differentiated with respect to t on both sides and rearranged to obtain

Replacing the quotient of the square root with its definition in (1), and equating the coefficients of powers of t in the resulting
expansion gives Bonnet’s recursion formula

This relation, along with the first two polynomials P0 and P1, allows the Legendre Polynomials to be generated recursively.

The first few Legendre polynomials are:

10
The graphs of these polynomials (up to n = 5) are shown below:
The orthogonality property
An important property of the Legendre polynomials is that they are orthogonal with respect to the L2 inner product on the
interval −1 ≤ x ≤ 1:

(where δmn denotes the Kronecker delta, equal to 1 if m = n and to 0 otherwise). In fact, an alternative derivation of the
Legendre polynomials is by carrying out the Gram-Schmidt process on the polynomials {1, x, x2, ...} with respect to this inner
product. The reason for this orthogonality property is that the Legendre differential equation can be viewed as a Sturm–
Liouville problem, where the Legendre polynomials are eigenfunctions of a Hermitian differential operator:

where the eigenvalue λ corresponds to n(n + 1).

Applications of Legendre polynomials in physics
The Legendre polynomials were first introduced in 1782 by Adrien-Marie Legendre as the coefficients in the expansion of the
Newtonian potential

where r and r' are the lengths of the vectors and respectively and γ is the angle between those two vectors. The series
converges when r > r'. The expression gives the gravitational potential associated to a point mass or the Coulomb potential
associated to a point charge. The expansion using Legendre polynomials might be useful, for instance, when integrating this
expression over a continuous mass or charge distribution.

Legendre polynomials occur in the solution of Laplace equation of the potential, , in a charge-free region of
space, using the method of separation of variables, where the boundary conditions have axial symmetry (no dependence on
an azimuthal angle). Where is the axis of symmetry and θ is the angle between the

position of the observer and the axis (the zenith angle), the solution for the potential will be

and are to be determined according to the boundary condition of each problem.

Legendre polynomials in multipole expansions

Legendre polynomials are also useful in expanding functions of the form (this is the same as before, written a little
differently):
which arise naturally in multipole expansions. The left-hand side of the equation is the generating function for the Legendre
polynomials.

As an example, the electric potential Φ(r,θ) (in spherical coordinates) due to a point charge located on the z-axis at z = a
(Figure 2) varies like

If the radius r of the observation point P is greater than a, the potential may be expanded in the Legendre polynomials

where we have defined η = a/r < 1 and x = cos θ. This expansion is used to develop the normal multipole expansion.

Conversely, if the radius r of the observation point P is smaller than a, the potential may still be expanded in the Legendre
polynomials as above, but with a and r exchanged. This expansion is the basis of interior multipole expansion.
Additional properties of Legendre polynomials
Legendre polynomials are symmetric or antisymmetric, that is

Since the differential equation and the orthogonality property are independent of scaling, the Legendre polynomials'
definitions are "standardized" (sometimes called "normalization", but note that the actual norm is not unity) by being scaled
so that

The derivative at the end point is given by

As discussed above, the Legendre polynomials obey the three term recurrence relation known as Bonnet’s recursion formula

and

Useful for the integration of Legendre polynomials is

From Bonnet’s recursion formula one obtains by induction the explicit representation
Shifted Legendre polynomials

The shifted Legendre polynomials are defined as . Here the "shifting" function (in
fact, it is an affine transformation) is chosen such that it bijectively maps the interval [0, 1+ to the interval *−1, 1], implying

that the polynomials are orthogonal on [0, 1]:

An explicit expression for the shifted Legendre polynomials is given by

The analogue of Rodrigues' formula for the shifted Legendre polynomials is

The first few shifted Legendre polynomials are:

0 1

1 2x − 1

2 6x2 − 6x + 1

3 20x3 − 30x2 + 12x − 1

 Legendre functions of fractional order

Legendre functions of fractional order exist and follow from insertion of fractional derivatives as defined by fractional calculus
and non-integer factorials (defined by the gamma function) into the Rodrigues' formula. The resulting functions continue to
satisfy the Legendre differential equation throughout (−1,1), but are no longer regular at the endpoints. The fractional order
Legendre function Pn agrees with the associated Legendre function P0n.