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(trying to understand the substitution for Feynman's method for this... I've seen a few examples of exactly this problem, but I can't seem to get the mechanics of it:

$$\int_0^\infty \frac{e^{-ay}-e^{-by}}{y}\mathrm{d}y$$

  1. splits to $\int \frac{e^{-ay}}{y}\mathrm{d}y - \int \frac{e^{-by}}{y}\mathrm{d}y$ ?
  2. add some function?

2 Answers2

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Note that $$\frac{e^{-ay} - e^{-by}}{y} = \int_{a}^{b} \exp(-yz) \, dz$$ so we have $$\int_{0}^{\infty} \int_{a}^{b} \exp(-yz) \, dz \, dy \overset{\text{Fubini}}{=} \int_{a}^{b} \int_{0}^{\infty} \exp(-yz) \, dy \, dz $$ $$= \int_{a}^{b} \frac{1}{y} \, dy = \ln(b/a)$$ The use of Fubini's theorem is justified since the function of interest is nonnegative everywhere (and hence Tonelli's theorem applies).

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Let $I$ be the original integral. To use Feynman's Method, we can use the Laplace Transformation

$$F\left(s\right)\ =\ \int_{0}^{\infty}\frac{e^{-ay}-e^{-by}}{y}e^{-sy}dy,$$

where $s+a,s+b > 0$. Taking $\dfrac{d}{ds}$ on both sides, we get

$$F'(s) = \int_0^{\infty}\frac{\partial}{\partial s}\frac{e^{-ay}-e^{-by}}{y}e^{-sy}dy = -\int_{0}^{\infty}\left(e^{-ay}-e^{-by}\right)e^{-sy}dy = \frac{a-b}{s^{2}+\left(a+b\right)s+ab}.$$

Integrating from $0$ to $\infty$ on both sides with respect to $s$, we apply the Fundamental Theorem of Calculus to get

$$\int_{0}^{\infty}F'\left(s\right)ds\ =\ F\left(\infty\right)-F\left(0\right)\ =\ 0\ -\ I\ =-I.$$

We can also do some grunt work and get

$$\int_{0}^{\infty}F'\left(s\right)ds\ =\ \int_{0}^{\infty}\frac{a-b}{s^{2}+\left(a+b\right)s+ab}ds\ =\ \ln\left(a\right)-\ln\left(b\right).$$

By the transitive property, we get

$$-I = \ln\left(a\right)-\ln\left(b\right).$$

Therefore, the integral $I$ is

$$\int_{0}^{\infty}\frac{e^{-ay}-e^{-by}}{y}dy = \ln\left(b\right) - \ln\left(a\right).$$

Accelerator
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  • (Technically I'm not "plugging in $\infty$," I'm taking the limit as some variable approaches it. I'm just abusing notations.) – Accelerator Sep 10 '22 at 07:17