Monday, 1 September 2014

calculus - Proving existence of improper integrals



I have this exercise:




Determine if the following improper integrals exist:




  • $$\int_{0}^{\infty} \frac{1}{\sqrt{1+x^3}}dx$$

  • $$\int_{0}^{\infty} \frac{x}{1+x^{\frac{3}{2}}}dx$$

  • $$\int_{0}^{\infty} \frac{1}{x\sqrt{1+x}}dx$$



I'm lost and I don't know how should I do it. I know that

$$\int_{0}^{\infty} f(x)dx = \lim_{n \to \infty} \int_{0}^{n}f(x)dx$$



And so, I try to calculate the integrals from zero to n, but I wasn't able to obtain an expression for them. Then I compute the integrals using Mathematica and those integrals seems to be really hard to compute manually, at least the first one, because the second and third integrals diverge.



I understand that the exercise only asks for a criteria for existance and that I don't need to compute an expression for the integrals, just give an argument of why do I say the integral exists or not, but I'm really stuck.



Is there a general result for improper integral's existence that I'm not using?


Answer




Result:




If $\lim_{x \rightarrow \infty} x^p f(x)=A < \infty$, then $$\int_a^\infty f(x) \;dx \;\text{is} \begin{cases} < \infty & \text{if}\;p>1\\\\\text{diverges}& \text{otherwise}\;\end{cases} $$




For the first bullet, consider $$\lim_{x \rightarrow \infty}x^{3/2}f(x)=\lim_{x \rightarrow \infty}x^{3/2}\frac{1}{x^{3/2}(1+1/x^3)^{1/2}}=\lim_{x \rightarrow \infty}\frac{1}{(1+1/x^3)^{1/2}}=1< \infty$$ so this improper integral exist!



For the second bullet, consider $\lim x^{1/2}f(x)$ and for the third case, consider $\lim xf(x)$


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