We express a certain complex-valued solution of Legendre's differential equation as the product of an oscillatory exponential function and an integral involving only nonoscillatory elementary functions. By calculating the logarithmic derivative of this solution, we show that Legendre's differential equation admits a nonoscillatory phase function. Moreover, we derive from our expression an asymptotic expansion useful for evaluating Legendre functions of the first and second kinds of large orders, as well as the derivative of the nonoscillatory phase function. Numerical experiments demonstrating the properties of our asymptotic expansion are presented.

Recently, it was observed that solutions of a large class of highly oscillatory second order linear ordinary differential equations can be approximated using nonoscillatory phase functions. In particular, under mild assumptions on the coefficients and wavenumber $\lambda$ of the equation, there exists a function whose Fourier transform decays as $\exp(-\mu |\xi|)$ and which represents solutions of the differential equation with accuracy on the order of $\lambda^{-1} \exp(-\mu \lambda)$. In this article, we establish an improved existence theorem for nonoscillatory phase functions. Among other things, we show that solutions of second order linear ordinary differential equations can be represented with accuracy on the order of $\lambda^{-1} \exp(-\mu \lambda)$ using functions in the space of rapidly decaying Schwartz functions whose Fourier transforms are both exponentially decaying and compactly supported. These new observations play an important role in the analysis of a method for the numerical solution of second order ordinary differential equations whose running time is independent of the parameter $\lambda$. This algorithm will be reported at a later date.

We observe that solutions of a large class of highly oscillatory second order linear ordinary differential equations can be approximated using nonoscillatory phase functions. In addition, we describe numerical experiments which illustrate important implications of this fact. For example, that many special functions of great interest --- such as the Bessel functions $J_\nu$ and $Y_\nu$ --- can be evaluated accurately using a number of operations which is $O(1)$ in the order $\nu$. The present paper is devoted to the development of an analytical apparatus. Numerical aspects of this work will be reported at a later date.

We introduce a version of the asymptotic expansions for Bessel functions $J_\nu(z)$, $Y_\nu(z)$ that is valid whenever $|z| > \nu$ (which is deep in the Fresnel regime), as opposed to the standard expansions that are applicable only in the Fraunhofer regime (i.e. when $|z| > \nu^2$). As expected, in the Fraunhofer regime our asymptotics reduce to the classical ones. The approach is based on the observation that Bessel's equation admits a non-oscillatory phase function, and uses classical formulas to obtain an asymptotic expansion for this function; this in turn leads to both an analytical tool and a numerical scheme for the efficient evaluation of $J_\nu(z)$, $Y_\nu(z)$, as well as various related quantities. The effectiveness of the technique is demonstrated via several numerical examples. We also observe that the procedure admits far-reaching generalizations to wide classes of second order differential equations, to be reported at a later date.