Uniform Approximation of Functions with Discrete Approximation Functionals

Abstract

Hoffman, Kouri, and collaborators have calculated nonrelativistic quantum scattering amplitudes by numerically evaluating Feynman path integrals. They observed that the errors introduced by their numerical scheme were uniform in coordinate space, implying that their scheme accurately reproduces both the shape and the phase of functions. Furthermore, they observed that the size and the uniform nature of the errors were preserved when the functions were allowed to evolve in time under the action of the kinetic energy operator. In this paper it is established that these observed properties of the errors are not numerical artifacts but follow from analytical properties of a general class of approximations that include those of Hoffman, Kouri, and collaborators as a special case. © 1999 Academic Press.