An integral that counts the zeros of a function

Abstract

Given a real function f on an interval [a, b] satisfying mild regularity conditions, we determine the number of zeros of f by evaluating a certain integral. The integrand depends on f, f′ and f″. In particular, by approximating the integral with the trapezoidal rule on a fine enough grid, we can compute the number of zeros of f by evaluating finitely many values of f, f′ and f″. A variant of the integral even allows to determine the number of the zeros broken down by their multiplicity.

Keywords

• number of zeros on an interval
• multiplicity of zeros
• 30c15