Associated Legendre polynomials 伴随勒让德多项式
In mathematics, the associated Legendre polynomials are the canonical solutions of the general Legendre equation
or equivalently
where the indices ℓ and m (which are integers) are referred to as the degree and order of the associated Legendre polynomial respectively. This equation has nonzero solutions that are nonsingular on [−1, 1] only if ℓ and m are integers with 0 ≤ m ≤ ℓ, or with trivially equivalent negative values. When in addition m is even, the function is a polynomial. When m is zero and ℓ integer, these functions are identical to the Legendre polynomials. In general, when ℓ and m are integers, the regular solutions are sometimes called "associated Legendre polynomials", even though they are not polynomials when m is odd. The fully general class of functions with arbitrary real or complex values of ℓ and m are Legendre functions. In that case the parameters are usually labelled with Greek letters.