RESEARCH JOURNAL

Legendre polynomials and applications

LE Hoang Anh1
1
Quantum Control Lab, Department of Physics, Korea University, Seoul, South Korea

Abstract

I write this note with the purpose of presenting Legendre polynomials in my own language. Therefore,
in this note, I only focus on jotting down what I have discovered during making effort to understand this
mathematical definition. For full derivations, read Classical Electrodynamics of Jackson or Mathematical
methods for Physicist of Arfken.

Legendre equation

The Legendre equation with azimuthal symmetry takes the following form
 
d 2 dP (x)


1−x + l (l + 1) P (x) = 0, (1)
dx dx

where the coefficient of P (x) later will be explained why it has such form of l (l + 1). It is customary to use
series to find the solution whereby the root of Eq. (1) is written as
∞
X
aj xj j ∈ Z+ .


P (x) = (2)
j=0

Here one could ask that why j is an element of non-negative integers, instead we could generate a series of
positive real powers of x. There are two reasons that I figured out as follows

• Firstly, it is too difficult to deal with real number while we could begin with the easier set of numbers,
namely Z.

• Secondly and more importantly, such solution in Eq. (2) could later reduce to polynomials whose integrals
and derivations are very mathematically simple.

By substituting Eq. (2) to Eq. (1), we obtain the following important equation
∞ n
X o
j (j − 1) alj xj−2 − [j (j + 1) − l (l + 1)] alj xj = 0 (3)
j=0

where the coefficients aj surely depends on l so I put the superscript as above. The Eq. (3) is satisfied iff every
coefficient according to every power of x vanishes. Hence, we could obtain the recurrence relation
j (j + 1) − l (l + 1) l (j − l) (j + l + 1) l
alj+2 = aj = a . (4)
(j + 1) (j + 2) (j + 1) (j + 2) j

Here the constant’s form of l (l + 1) works, it helps to obtain the convenient form in the rightmost of Eq. (4).
We first discuss the cases of two first js.
For both j = 0 and j = 1, the coefficients of x−2 and x−1 are 0. There are two remarkable comments here.

• We obviously can’t choose al0 = al1 = 0 which leads to trivial solution.

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 RESEARCH JOURNAL

• Jackson mysteriously argued that it is sufficient to choose either a0 or a1 to be zero. At the time I read
his book, I felt struggled to understand. Let see what will go on later to check his argument.

To compute explicit formula of solution, we consider two more conditions

• Take Pl (1) = 1 as the boundary condition

• The final solutions are polynomials whereby we try to terminate the series in Eq. (2) at appropriate powers
of x.

From Eqs. (2) and (4) we could construct the root of Legendre equation as follows
   
l l (l + 1) 2 l (l + 1) (l − 2) (l + 3) 4 l (l − 1) (l + 2) 3 (l − 1) (l + 2) (l − 3) (l + 4) 5
a0 1 − x + x − . . . +a1 x + x − x + ... ,
2! 4! 3! 5!
(5)
where the series following the coefficients a0l and a1l are respectively called even and odd parts which indicate
not only the power of variables x but also values of l terminating the series. Also, now we could understand the
mysterious word of sufficient from Jackson that if we put both a0l and a1l differently from 0 then the series will
never terminates. For example, in the case of P2 (x), there is no chance to terminate the odd part (you do the
math). Therefore, a general form of the roots which are called as Legendre polynomials could be written as
 
even l l (l + 1) 2 l (l + 1) (l − 2) (l + 3) 4
Pl (x) = a0 1 − x + x − ... (6a)
2! 4!
 
odd l (l − 1) (l + 2) 3 (l − 1) (l + 2) (l − 3) (l + 4) 5
Pl (x) = a1 x + x − x + ... . (6b)
3! 5!

From now on, with the boundary condition we straightforwardly construct the explicit form of Legendre poly-
nomials

P0 (x) = 1 (7a)
P1 (x) = x (7b)
1
3x2 − 1


P2 (x) = (7c)
2
1
5x3 − 3x .


P3 (x) = (7d)
2