The standard saddle point method of asymptotic expansions of integrals requires to show the existence of the steepest descent paths of the phase function and the computation of the coefficients of the expansion from a function implicitly defined by solving an inversion problem. This means that the method is not systematic because the steepest descent paths depend on the phase function on hand and there is not a general and explicit formula for the coefficients of the expansion (like in Watson's Lemma for example). We propose a more systematic variant of the method in which the computation of the steepest descent paths is trivial and almost universal: it only depends on the location and the order of the saddle points of the phase function. Moreover, this variant of the method generates an asymptotic expansion given in terms of a generalized (and universal) asymptotic sequence that avoids the computation of the standard coefficients, giving an explicit and systematic formula for the expansion that may be easily implemented on a symbolic manipulation program. As an illustrative example, the well-known asymptotic expansion of the Airy function is rederived almost trivially using this method. New asymptotic expansions of the Hankel function H n (z) for large n and z are given as non-trivial examples.

The main difficulties in the Laplace's method of asymptotic expansions of integrals are originated by a change of variables. We propose a variant of the method which avoids that change of variables and simplifies the computations. On the one hand, the calculation of the coefficients of the asymptotic expansion is remarkably simpler. On the other hand, the asymptotic sequence is as simple as in the standard Laplace's method: inverse powers of the asymptotic variable. New asymptotic expansions of the Gamma function Γ (z) for large z and the Gauss hypergeometric function 2 F 1 (a, b, c; z) for large b and c are given as illustrations. An explicit formula for the coefficients of the classical Stirling expansion of Γ (z) is also given.

We consider the incomplete gamma function [Formula: see text] for [Formula: see text] and [Formula: see text]. We derive several convergent expansions of [Formula: see text] in terms of exponentials and rational functions of [Formula: see text] that hold uniformly in [Formula: see text] with [Formula: see text] bounded from below. These expansions, multiplied by [Formula: see text], are expansions of [Formula: see text] uniformly convergent in [Formula: see text] with [Formula: see text] bounded from above. The expansions are accompanied by realistic error bounds.

No abstract

No abstract