As the Taylor series expansion is the “best” polynomial approximation to
a function, the Padé approximants are the “best” rational
function approximations to the original function. The Padé
approximant often has a wider radius of convergence than the corresponding
Taylor series, and can even converge where the Taylor series does not. This
makes it very suitable for computer-based numerical analysis.
The \(\left[L / M\right]\) Padé approximant to a Taylor
series \(A(x)\) is the quotient
$$\frac{P_L(x)}{Q_M(x)}$$
where \(P_L(x)\) is of order \(L\) and \(Q_M(x)\) is of order \(M\). In
this case:
$$A(x) - \frac{P_L(x)}{Q_M(x)} = \mathcal{O}\left(x^{L + M + 1}\right)$$
When \(q_0\) is defined to be \(1\), there is a unique solution to the
system of linear equations which can be used to calculate the coefficients.
The function accepts a vector A
of length T + 1
, composed of the
\(a_n\) of the of truncated Taylor series
$$A(x) = \sum_{j=0}^T a_j x^j$$
and returns a list of two elements, Px
and Qx
, the
Padé numerator and denominator coefficients respectively, as long as
\(L + M \leq T\).