Chebyshev nodes

Here we plot the Chebyshev nodes of the first kind and the second kind, both for n = 8. For both kinds of nodes, we first plot the points equi-distant on the upper half unit circle in blue. Then the blue points are projected down to the x-axis. The projected points, in red, are the Chebyshev nodes.

In numerical analysis, Chebyshev nodes are two sets of specific real algebraic numbers, used as nodes for polynomial interpolation. They are the projections of equispaced points on the unit circle onto the real interval $[-1,1],$ the diameter of the circle. Polynomial interpolants constructed from these nodes minimize the effect of Runge's phenomenon.

Definition

Chebyshev nodes of both kinds from $n=2$ to $n=50$.

In the following, n is a positive integer.

The Chebyshev nodes of the first kind, also called Chebyshev points or Chebyshev zeroes, are $$x_{k}=\cos \left({\frac {2k+1}{2n}}\pi \right),\quad k=0,\ldots ,n-1.$$ These are the roots of $T_{n}$, the Chebyshev polynomial of the first kind with degree $n$.

The Chebyshev nodes of the second kind, also called Chebyshev-Lobatto points or Chebyshev extrema, are $$x_{k}=\cos \left({\frac {k}{n-1}}\pi \right),\quad k=0,\ldots ,n-1.$$ These are the roots of $U_{n}$, the Chebyshev polynomial of the second kind with degree $n$. They are also the points where $T_{n-1}$ takes its extreme values $\pm 1$.

Depending on context, unqualified terms like Chebyshev nodes may refer to either the first or the second kind.

Remarks

The given formulas sort the Chebyshev nodes from the greatest to the smallest. While the second-kind nodes include the interval end points -1 and +1, the first-kind nodes do not. Both kinds of nodes are symmetric about the midpoint of the interval. The midpoint is a node iff n is odd.

For nodes over an arbitrary interval an affine transformation from [-1,1] to [a,b] can be used: $${\tilde {x}}_{k}={\frac {(a+b)}{2}}+{\frac {(b-a)}{2}}x_{k}.$$

Approximation

The Chebyshev nodes are important in approximation theory because they form a particularly good set of nodes for polynomial interpolation. Given a function f on the interval $[-1,+1]$ and $n$ points $x_{1},x_{2},\ldots ,x_{n},$ in that interval, the interpolation polynomial is that unique polynomial $P_{n-1}$ of degree at most $n-1$ which has value $f(x_{i})$ at each point $x_{i}$. The interpolation error at $x$ is $$f(x)-P_{n-1}(x)={\frac {f^{(n)}(\xi )}{n!}}\prod _{i=1}^{n}(x-x_{i})$$ for some $\xi$ (depending on x) in [−1, 1]. So it is logical to try to minimize $$\max _{x\in [-1,1]}{\biggl |}\prod _{i=1}^{n}(x-x_{i}){\biggr |}.$$

This product is a monic polynomial of degree n. It may be shown that the maximum absolute value (maximum norm) of any such polynomial is bounded from below by 2¹⁻ⁿ. This bound is attained by the scaled Chebyshev polynomials 2¹⁻ⁿ T_n, which are also monic. (Recall that |T_n(x)| ≤ 1 for x ∈ [−1, 1].) Therefore, when the interpolation nodes x_i are the roots of T_n, the error satisfies $$\left|f(x)-P_{n-1}(x)\right|\leq {\frac {1}{2^{n-1}n!}}\max _{\xi \in [-1,1]}\left|f^{(n)}(\xi )\right|.$$ For an arbitrary interval [a, b] a change of variable shows that $$\left|f(x)-P_{n-1}(x)\right|\leq {\frac {1}{2^{n-1}n!}}\left({\frac {b-a}{2}}\right)^{n}\max _{\xi \in [a,b]}\left|f^{(n)}(\xi )\right|.$$

Even order modified Chebyshev nodes

Many applications for Chebyshev nodes, such as the design of equally terminated passive Chebyshev filters, cannot use Chebyshev nodes directly, due to the lack of a root at 0. However, the Chebyshev nodes may be modified into a usable form by translating the roots down such that the lowest roots are moved to zero, thereby creating two roots at zero of the modified Chebyshev nodes.

The even order modification translation is:

$X_{k}Even={\sqrt {\frac {X_{k}^{2}-X_{n/2}^{2}}{1-X_{n/2}^{2}}}}{\text{ For }}n>2$

The sign of the ${\sqrt {}}$ function is chosen to be the same as the sign of $X_{k}$.

For example, the Chebyshev nodes for a 4th order Chebyshev function are, {0.92388,0.382683,-0.382683,-0.92388}, and $X_{n/2}^{2}$ is $0.382683^{2}$, or 0.146446. Running all the nodes through the translation yields $X_{k}Even$ to be {0.910180, 0, 0, -0.910180}.

The modified even order Chebyshev nodes now contains two nodes of zero, and is suitable for use in designing even order Chebyshev filters with equally terminated passive element networks.

References

• Fink, Kurtis D.; Mathews, John H. (1999). Numerical Methods using MATLAB (3rd ed.). Upper Saddle River NJ: Prentice Hall.
• Stewart, Gilbert W. (1996). Afternotes on Numerical Analysis. SIAM. ISBN 978-0-89871-362-6.
• Trefethen, Lloyd N. (2013), Approximation Theory and Approximation Practice, SIAM

Further reading

• Burden, Richard L.; Faires, J. Douglas: Numerical Analysis, 8th ed., pages 503–512, ISBN 0-534-39200-8.