General Solution of the Taylor Series Coefficient Problem in the Theory of Jacobian Elliptic Functions

Karl Wodnar
Institut of astronomy - University of Vienna, Austria


Elliptic Functions are an inevitable ingredient of several theories in celestial mechanics, see e.g. the interesting work of Williams (1992), and in dynamics in general. In the course of dealing with a generalized standard map as proposed by Ichtiaroglou in Wodnar et al. (1996) in the context of applying non-integrability proofs, we found the present theory. In the well known collection of formulas Abramowitz & Stegun (1984) on page 229 the leading terms of the Taylor expansion of the classical three Jacobian elliptic functions sn, cn, dn in the default argument (not the modulus) are given up to seventh order with the following remark added: `No formulae are known for the general coefficient in these series.' Also other more recent formula encyclopedias do not go beyond listing some leading terms of the expansion considered, neglecting the question of general coefficients. The present work solves this problem completely also for the nine other related elliptic functions in a rather concise way. Beside the theoretical interest of such a result, there is also a new practically applicable method for numerical calculation of the functions in question at hand, which - for convergence reasons - is being used on a quarterperiod and then is transferred to the whole domain by the well known symmetries.

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