The Pearcey integral in the highly oscillatory region

Abstract

We consider the Pearcey integral P(x, y) for large values of |y| and bounded values of |x|. The integrand of the Pearcey integral oscillates wildly in this region and the asymptotic saddle point analysis is complicated. Then we consider here the modified saddle point method introduced in [Lopez, Pérez and Pagola, 2009] [4]. With this method, the analysis is simpler and it is possible to derive a complete asymptotic expansion of P(x, y) for large |y|. The asymptotic analysis requires the study of three different regions for separately. In the three regions, the expansion is given in terms of inverse powers of y2/3 and the coefficients are elementary functions of x. The accuracy of the approximation is illustrated with some numerical experiments.