Miller's recurrence algorithm explained

Miller's recurrence algorithm is a procedure for the backward calculation of a rapidly decreasing solution of a three-term recurrence relation developed by J. C. P. Miller. It was originally developed to compute tables of the modified Bessel function but also applies to Bessel functions of the first kind and has other applications such as computation of the coefficients of Chebyshev expansions of other special functions.

Many families of special functions satisfy a recurrence relation that relates the values of the functions of different orders with common argument

The modified Bessel functions of the first kind

I_n(x)

satisfy the recurrence relation

I_n-1(x)=

	2n
	x

I_n(x)+I_n+1(x)

.However, the modified Bessel functions of the second kind

K_n(x)

also satisfy the same recurrence relation

K_n-1(x)=

	2n
	x

K_n(x)+K_n+1(x)

The first solution decreases rapidly with

. The second solution increases rapidly with

. Miller's algorithm provides a numerically stable procedure to obtain the decreasing solution.

To compute the terms of a recurrence

a₀

through

a_N

according to Miller's algorithm, one first chooses a value

much larger than

and computes a trial solution taking initial condition

a_M

to an arbitrary non-zero value (such as 1) and taking

a_M+1

and later terms to be zero. Then the recurrence relation is used to successively compute trial values for

a_M-1

a_M-2

down to

a₀

. Noting that a second sequence obtained from the trial sequence by multiplication by a constant normalizing factor will still satisfy the same recurrence relation, one can then apply a separate normalizing relationship to determine the normalizing factor that yields the actual solution.

In the example of the modified Bessel functions, a suitable normalizing relation is a summation involving the even terms of the recurrence:

I_0(x)+2\sum

	infty

	m=1

	mI
(-1)
	2m

(x)=1

where the infinite summation becomes finite due to the approximation that

a_M+1

and later terms are zero.

Finally, it is confirmed that the approximation error of the procedure is acceptable by repeating the procedure with a second choice of

larger than the initial choice and confirming that the second set of results for

a₀

through

a_N

agree within the first set within the desired tolerance. Note that to obtain this agreement, the value of

must be large enough such that the term

a_M

is small compared to the desired tolerance.

In contrast to Miller's algorithm, attempts to apply the recurrence relation in the forward direction starting from known values of

I_0(x)

and

I_1(x)

obtained by other methods will fail as rounding errors introduce components of the rapidly increasing solution.

Olver and Gautschi analyses the error propagation of the algorithm in detail.

For Bessel functions of the first kind, the equivalent recurrence relation and normalizing relationship are:

J_n-1(x)=

	2n
	x

J_n(x)-J_n+1(x)

J_0(x)+2\sum

	infty

	m=1

J_2m(x)=1

The algorithm is particularly efficient in applications that require the values of the Bessel functions for all orders

0 … N

for each value of

compared to direct independent computations of

N+1

separate functions