Excellent introductory text, written by two experts, presents a coherent and systematic view of principles and methods. Topics include integration by parts, Watson's lemma, LaPlace's method, stationary phase, and steepest descents. Additional subjects include the Mellin transform method and less elementary aspects of the method of steepest descents. 1975 edition.

Various methods for asymptotic evaluation of integrals containing a large parameter, and solutions of ordinary linear differential equations by means of asymptotic expansion.

'The sturgeon they sent was second grade fresh,' said the barman. 'Really, what nonsense/' 'Why nonsense?' '"Second grade fresh" that's what I call nonsense/ There's only one degree of freshness the first, and it's the last) (M. A. Bulgakov, The Master and Margarita) The goal of this book is to describe in detail how Feynman integrals can be expanded in suitable parameters, when various momenta or masses are small or large. In a narrow sense, this problem is connected with practical calcula tions. In a situation where a given Feynman integral depends on parameters of very different scales, a natural idea is to replace it by a sufficiently large number of terms of an expansion of it in ratios of small and large scales. It will be explained how this problem of expansion can be systematically solved, by formulating universal prescriptions that express terms of the expansion by using the original Feynman integral with its integrand expanded into a Taylor series in appropriate momenta and masses. It turns out that knowledge of the structure of the asymptotic expansion at the diagrammatic level is a key point in understanding how to perform expansions at the operator level. There are various examples of these ex pansions: the operator product expansion, the large mass expansion, Heavy Quark Effective Theory, Non Relativistic QCD, etc. Each of them serves as a realization of the factorization of contributions of different scales.

Content and Aims of this Book Earlier drafts of the manuscript of this book (James A. Boa was then coau thor) contained discussions of many methods and examples of singular perturba tion problems. The ambitious plans of covering a large number of topics were later abandoned in favor of the present goal: a thorough discussion of selected ideas and techniques used in the method of matched asymptotic expansions. Thus many problems and methods are not covered here: the method of av eraging and the related method of multiple scales are mentioned mainly to give reasons why they are not discussed further. Examples which required too sophis ticated and involved calculations, or advanced knowledge of a special field, are not treated; for instance, to the author's regret some very interesting applications to fluid mechanics had to be omitted for this reason. Artificial mathematical examples introduced to show some exotic or unexpected behavior are omitted, except when they are analytically simple and are needed to illustrate mathematical phenomena important for realistic problems. Problems of numerical analysis are not discussed.

This outstanding text concentrates on the mathematical ideas underlying various asymptotic methods for ordinary differential equations that lead to full, infinite expansions. "A book of great value." — Mathematical Reviews. 1976 revised edition.

-Fourier analysis, --

Asymptotic representation of a function os of great importance in many branches of pure and applied mathematics.