
1. Introduction
Modeling phenomena using partial differential equations are attractive to physicists, mathematicians, engineers, etc., this is due to many phenomena such as diffusion of particles, heat diffusion, fluid flow behavior on porous media, among others, are modeled with this type of differential equations (see [1] - [7] ). However, when we use the Laplace transform to find the solution of these models, it is likely to find multivalued functions, so the Laplace inverse transform is commonly solved by numerical methods, for example, in [8] [9] studied models that predict the fluid flow on porous media, they used the Laplace transform and found multivalued functions of the type
, and to give the solution through Laplace inverse transform they used the Stehfest numerical method. The Stehfest numerical method has restrictions for functions that have discontinuities [10] , so it is more advisable to find the exact solution. In some cases, it is possible to give the exact solution [11] , but to obtain the exact solution of these models, a deeper study of the Laplace inverse transform of the multivalued functions found is necessary. In this work, we study Laplace inverse transform for functions that involve the nth root of a product of linear factors. It is divided into two sections as follows: In the first section, we use the Laplace inverse transform defined as
(1)
to find the function
. Here
and
involve to
where n is positive integer and
are real positive. The function
is represented in terms of integrals that are easily approximated numerically. To find this function, we consider the branch cut and the integration contour of Figure 1.
In section two, We give analytical examples and also numerically solve the function
for some particular cases and compare versus the Stehfest
numerical method. We also show that the Stehfest numerical method does not approximate well to the exact solution near the discontinuities.
2. Theorems
In this section, we propose and prove four theorems associated with the Laplace inverse transform for multivalued functions that involve
. It should be mentioned that in particular Theorem 4 can be used to find the solution of some differential equations that model the fluid flow on porous media, for example [11] .
Theorem 1. Suppose
,
,
and
then the Laplace inverse transform of the function
is given by
(2)
where
Proof. Using the Laplace inverse transform, we have
As
are branch points of the function
, then we consider the region of the Figure 1 and the branch cut
for the nth root. Using Cauchy Theorem is found
(3)
It is easy to prove that
when
. In addition also
to
when
, this is because if
with
then
thus
when
. Analogously if
with
we prove that
when
.
For
, we obtain
as
and
is negative in
, then
when
, thus
it is for
small enough. Similarly for
.
For integrals over
and over
with
we analyze as follows: If
with
we obtain
(4)
Using Equation (4) we find
then
(5)
On the other hand, if
con
we obtain
then
(6)
Thus, for Equation (5) and Equation (6) we find
Finally, adding all integrals and replacing in Equation (3), we obtain
,
Theorem 2. Suppose
,
,
and
then the Laplace inverse transform of the function
is given by
(7)
where
Proof. Again we use the region Figure 1. In analogy with the proof of the
previous Theorem we have
,
and
when
for
and also
and
when
.
On the other hand we have
where
then
Therefore, we add all the integrals so we find the result.,
Theorem 3. Suppose
,
,
and
then the Laplace inverse transform of the function
is given by
(8)
where
Note that
can change by
when k is even or odd.
Proof. The proof is analogous to the previous theorems. ,
Theorem 4. Suppose
,
,
and
where
is the modified Bessel function of order 0 then the Laplace inverse transform of the function
is given by
(9)
where
are the corresponding Bessel functions of order 0 and
Proof. For the proof, we used the following properties of the Bessel functions (see [12] [13] [14] )
(10)
(11)
(12)
where
and
are the Hankel’s functions of the order
.
Consider the case when k is odd (for k even the proof is analogous). Also
consider the region of Figure 1 then
is like Equation (3). Then
,
for
when
, also
when
. For
the integrals on
and on
with
we obtain the following: if
is of the form
, we used Equation (10) and Equation (11), then
(13)
where
On the other hand, if
is of the form
, we used Equation (12) then
(14)
where
Note that
is found using Equation (4) with
. As k is odd then there are
integrals of the form Equation (13) and there are
of the form Equation (14). Thus
(15)
On the other hand, for
, we have that
(16)
so,
is 0 when
for
sufficiently small. Similarly to
. Thus, using
, Equation (15) and Equation (16), we arrive to
,
3. Analytical Examples and Numerical Approximation
In this section, we give some analytical examples corresponding to the exact solutions of the previous theorems and solve the integrals numerically for some particular cases.
Example 1. We consider that
,
,
and
, then using (2)
Furthermore, since
with
is the modified Bessel function of order
, then
Example 2. We consider that
,
,
and
, then using (7)
so
Example 3. We consider that
,
,
,
and
, then using (8)
so
where
is the hypergeometric function.
Example 4. We consider that
,
,
and
then using (9)
where
On the other hand, we solve the integrals numerically corresponding to the exact solutions of Theorems 1, 2, 3 and 4 then we compare versus Stehfest numerical method. This method consist in numerically finding the Laplace inverse transform of the
using:
where
In Figure 2(a) and Figure 2(b) we observed in red color Equations ((2) and
![]()
Figure 2. Comparison of the exact solution (2), (7), (8), (9) with parameters
,
,
,
,
,
,
,
,
and the Stehfest numerical method with
.
![]()
Figure 3. Comparison of the exact solution (2) with paramteters
,
,
,
,
,
,
and Stehfest numerical method for different
, this is for t small.
(7)) respectively with parameters
,
,
,
,
,
and
. In Figure 2(c) we observed Equation (8) in red color with the same previous parameters in conjunction with
. In Figure 2(d) we observed Equation (9) in red color with the same previous parameters in conjunction with
. On the other hand, in all plots of Figure 2 Stehfest numerical method is shown in black color with
and functions
corresponding to the aforetmentioned parameters for each cases. As expected in all cases the exact solution of the theorems proposed here coincide with Stehfest numerical method for large t values, however the stephens method does not approach well near the discontinuities of the function, for example in Figure 3 we see in red color the same exact solution of Figure 2(a) for small t values, and in black color the Stehfest numerical method for different
. In this figure is shown that if
increase then Stehfest numerical method approximates better to exact solution near zero but still the approximation is bad, this is because Stehfest numerical method does not give a good approximation near points where the functions are discontinuous (see [10] ).
4. Conclusion
In this work, we solved the inverse Laplace transform for multivalued functions that involving the nth root of a product of linear factors, we show that results are correct and also give analytical and numerical examples. The numerical examples were compared with Stehfest numerical method, concluding that the curves coincide for values far from the discontinuities of the solution, while for values close to the discontinuity the Stehfest numerical method does not have good approximation.