1
$\begingroup$

I need to calculate the inverse Laplace transform of $F(s)=\frac{1}{s^\alpha-\lambda}$ where $\lambda$ is a complex number and $\alpha$ is a real numbers.

I know that it is going to envolves the gamma function but I have no idea what to do with that $\lambda$.

Can someone give me any hint?

  • 1
    Even if $\lambda = 1$ this is a harder problem than I can do (say, taking $\alpha = \pi.$) Are you sure you have the right $F$? If so, you might look at the Wiki page on "inverse laplace transform" and try Mellin's inverse formula (but I don't see much hope there.) Even something fairly sane like $\alpha = 16, \lambda = 1$ is going to be pretty tedious.2017-01-05
  • 0
    Thank you. In general $\alpha$ and $\lambda$ are not integers. :(2017-01-05

1 Answers 1

1

I'll assume $\alpha > 0$, so that we have $\lim\limits_{\operatorname{Re} s \to +\infty} F(s) = 0$, as it should be for the Laplace transform of a function with at most exponential growth. We can expand $F(s)$ into a geometric series,

$$F(s) = \frac{1}{s^{\alpha} - \lambda} = s^{-\alpha}\frac{1}{1 - \lambda s^{-\alpha}} = \sum_{k = 0}^{\infty} \lambda^k s^{-(k+1)\alpha},$$

that converges uniformly on $\mathbb{C}\setminus D_R(0)$ for sufficiently large $R$ (depending on $\lambda$), and apply the inverse Laplace transformation termwise. Since

$$\int_0^{\infty} t^{\beta - 1} e^{-st}\,dt = s^{-\beta}\Gamma(\beta)$$

for $\beta > 0$, we get the series expansion

$$f(t) := \sum_{k = 0}^{\infty} \frac{\lambda^k}{\Gamma((k+1)\alpha)}t^{(k+1)\alpha-1}\tag{$\ast$}$$

for the (potential) inverse Laplace transform of $F$. Now one can verify that the series in $(\ast)$ converges for all $t > 0$ and all $\lambda \in \mathbb{C}$, and that $f(t)e^{-st} \in L^1((0,+\infty))$ for $\operatorname{Re} s$ large enough. The dominated convergence theorem then shows that

$$\mathcal{L}[f](s) = \int_0^{\infty} f(t)e^{-st}\,dt = \sum_{k = 0}^{\infty} \frac{\lambda^k}{\Gamma((k+1)\alpha)} \int_0^{\infty} t^{(k+1)\alpha-1}e^{-st}\,dt = F(s).$$

For $\alpha \in \mathbb{N}\setminus \{0\}$, one can give a closed-form expression of $f$ in terms of $\exp \bigl(\rho_m t\bigr)$, where $\rho_m$ ranges over the possible values of $\lambda^{1/\alpha}$, but for general $\alpha \in (0,+\infty)$ I'm not aware of a nicer expression than $(\ast)$.