Integration is the basic operation in integral calculus. While differentiation has easy rules by which the derivative of a complicated function can be found by differentiating its simpler component functions, integration does not, so tables of known integrals are often useful. This page lists some of the most common antiderivatives.
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A compilation of a list of integrals (Integraltafeln) and techniques of integral calculus was published by the German mathematician Meyer Hirsch in 1810. These tables were republished in the United Kingdom in 1823. More extensive tables were compiled in 1858 by the Dutch mathematician David de Bierens de Haan. A new edition was published in 1862. These tables, which contain mainly integrals of elementary functions, remained in use until the middle of the 20th century. They were then replaced by the much more extensive tables of Gradshteyn and Ryzhik. In Gradshteyn and Ryzhik, integrals originating from the book by de Bierens are denoted by BI.
Not all closed-form expressions have closed-form antiderivatives; this study forms the subject of differential Galois theory, which was initially developed by Joseph Liouville in the 1830s and 1840s, leading to Liouville's theorem which classifies which expressions have closed form antiderivatives. A simple example of a function without a closed form antiderivative is e−x2, whose antiderivative is (up to constants) the error function.
Since 1968 there is the Risch algorithm for determining indefinite integrals that can be expressed in term of elementary functions, typically using a computer algebra system. Integrals that cannot be expressed using elementary functions can be manipulated symbolically using general functions such as the Meijer G-function.
More detail may be found on the following pages for the lists of integrals:
Gradshteyn, Ryzhik, Jeffrey, Zwillinger's Table of Integrals, Series, and Products contains a large collection of results. An even larger, multivolume table is the Integrals and Series by Prudnikov, Brychkov, and Marichev (with volumes 1–3 listing integrals and series of elementary and special functions, volume 4–5 are tables of Laplace transforms). More compact collections can be found in e.g. Brychkov, Marichev, Prudnikov's Tables of Indefinite Integrals, or as chapters in Zwillinger's CRC Standard Mathematical Tables and Formulae, Bronstein and Semendyayev's Handbook of Mathematics (Springer) and Oxford Users' Guide to Mathematics (Oxford Univ. Press), and other mathematical handbooks.
Other useful resources include Abramowitz and Stegun and the Bateman Manuscript Project. Both works contain many identities concerning specific integrals, which are organized with the most relevant topic instead of being collected into a separate table. Two volumes of the Bateman Manuscript are specific to integral transforms.
There are several web sites which have tables of integrals and integrals on demand. Wolfram Alpha can show results, and for some simpler expressions, also the intermediate steps of the integration. Wolfram Research also operates another online service, the Wolfram Mathematica Online Integrator.
C is used for an arbitrary constant of integration that can only be determined if something about the value of the integral at some point is known. Thus each function has an infinite number of antiderivatives.
These formulas only state in another form the assertions in the table of derivatives.
When there is a singularity in the function being integrated such that the integral becomes undefined, i.e., it is not Lebesgue integrable, then C does not need to be the same on both sides of the singularity. The forms below normally assume the Cauchy principal value around a singularity in the value of C but this is not in general necessary. For instance in
there is a singularity at 0 and the integral becomes infinite there. If the integral above was used to give a definite integral between -1 and 1 the answer would be 0. This however is only the value assuming the Cauchy principal value for the integral around the singularity. If the integration was done in the complex plane the result would depend on the path around the origin, in this case the singularity contributes −iπ when using a path above the origin and iπ for a path below the origin. A function on the real line could use a completely different value of C on either side of the origin as in:
These rational functions have a non-integrable singularity at 0 for a ≤ −1.
Ci, Si: Trigonometric integrals, Ei: Exponential integral, li: Logarithmic integral function, erf: Error function
There are some functions whose antiderivatives cannot be expressed in closed form. However, the values of the definite integrals of some of these functions over some common intervals can be calculated. A few useful integrals are given below.
The method of exhaustion provides a formula for the general case when no antiderivative exists:
Start by using the substitution
This brings the integral to the general form
which after integration by parts yields
and provided the first term vanishes at the end points, we get the recurrence relation
which upon computation gives
Applying to our integral, we notice that
Hence the final answer is:
attributed to Johann Bernoulli.