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Nama :

Dwi Rima islami (070806)

Lia Amelia(070822)

Yuniar Dian Nurinawati (070790)Semester : 5 B

LEGENDRE POLINOMIAL FOR FHYSIC

The Legendre polynomials were first introduced in 1782 by

Adrien-Marie Legendre

as thecoefficients in the expansion of the Newtonian potential where

and

' are the lengths of the vectors X

‘

respectively and γ is the angle between thosetwo vectors. The series converges when

' . The expression gives thegravitational potentialassociated to a point massor theCoulomb potentialassociated to a point charge. The expansion using Legendre polynomials might be useful, for instance, when integratingthis expression over a continuous mass or charge distribution.Legendre polynomials occur in the solution of Laplace equationof 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 anazimuthal angle). , Where Di mana 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 bedan are to be determined according to the boundary condition of each problem

[ 2 ]

LEGENDRE POLYNOMIALS IN MULTIPOLE EXPANSIONS

Figure 2Legendre polynomials are also useful in expanding functions of the form (this is the same as before, written a little differently):which arise naturally inmultipole expansions. The left-hand side of the equation is thegenerating functionfor the Legendre polynomials. As an example, theelectric potentialΦ(

,θ) (inspherical coordinates) due to a point chargelocated on the

-axis at

(Figure 2)varies likeIf the radius

of the observation point

is greater than

, the potential may be expanded inthe Legendre polynomialswhere we have defined

< 1 and

= cos

. This expansion is used to develop thenormalmultipole expansion. Conversely, if the radius

of the observation point

is smaller

than

, the potential may still be expanded in the Legendre polynomials as above, but with

and

exchanged. This expansion is the basis of interior multipole expansion.

ADDITIONAL PROPERTIES OF LEGENDRE POLYNOMIALS

Legendre polynomials are symmetric or antisymmetric, that isSince the differential equation and the orthogonality property are independent of scaling, theLegendre polynomials' definitions are "standardized" (sometimes called "normalization", butnote that the actual norm is not unity) by being scaled so thatThe derivative at the end point is given byAs discussed above, the Legendre polynomials obey using the three term recurrence relationknown as Bonnet's recursion formulaandUseful for the integration of Legendre polynomials is