Efficient recursive methods for partial fraction expansion of general rational functions

Abstract

Partial fraction expansion (pfe) is a classic technique used in many fields of pure or applied mathematics. The paper focuses on the pfe of general rational functions in both factorized and expanded form. Novel, simple, and recursive formulas for the computation of residues and residual polynomial coefficients are derived. The proposed pfe methods require only simple pure-algebraic operations in the whole computation process. They do not involve derivatives when tackling proper functions and require no polynomial division when dealing with improper functions. The methods are efficient and very easy to apply for both computer and manual calculation. Various numerical experiments confirm that the proposed methods can achieve quite desirable accuracy even for pfe of rational functions with multiple high-order poles or some tricky ill-conditioned poles.