Spherical Bessel Functions

Spherical Bessel functions, j` (x) and n` (x), are solutions to the differential equation
 
d2 f` 2 df` `(` + 1)
+ + 1− f` = 0.
dx2 x dx x2
(1) (2)
Also useful are the combinations h` (x) = j` (x) + in` (x) and h` (x) = j` (x) − in` (x) =
(1) (1)
[h` (x)]∗ and the modified spherical Bessel functions i` (x) = i` j` (ix) and k` (x) = −i` h` (ix).
For ` = 0, the solutions are
sin x cos x
j0 (x) = , n0 (x) = − .
x x
From the series solution, with the conventional normalization [see George Arfken, Mathe-
matical Methods for Physicists (1985)], it can be shown that
2` + 1 df
f`−1 + f`+1 = f` (x), `f`−1 − (` + 1)f`+1 = (2` + 1) ` ,
x dx
or
d h `+1 i d h −` i
x f` (x) = x`+1 f`−1 (x), x f` (x) = x−` f`+1 (x),
dx dx
(1) (2)
where f` can be any of j` , nl , h` , h` . These two recurrence relations in turn lead back to
the differential equation. Induction on ` leads to the Rayleigh formulas,
   
` ` 1 d ` ` ` 1 d `
j` (x) = (−1) x j0 (x), n` (x) = (−1) x n0 (x).
x dx x dx
Applied for ` = 1 and ` = 2, these give
sin x cos x cos x sin x
j1 (x) = − , n1 (x) = − − ,
x2 x x2 x
   
3 1 3 3 1 3
j2 (x) = − sin x − 2 cos x, n2 (x) = − − cos x − sin x.
x3 x x x3 x x2
From the Rayleigh expressions it is easy to extract limiting behaviors: For x  l, the
solutions behave as
2` `! x` (2`)! (2` − 1)!!
j` ≈ x` = , n` ≈ − l x−(`+1) = −
(2` + 1)! (2` + 1)!! 2 `! x`+1
and for x  `,

1  `π  1  `π  eix
(1)
j` ∼ sin x − , n` ∼ − cos x − , h` ∼ (−i)`+1 .
x 2 x 2 x

Plots of j0 through j4 and n0 through n4 appear on the following page.

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Spherical Bessel functions j` (x)

Spherical Neumann functions n` (x)