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Antiderivative

For lists of antiderivatives of primitive functions, see lists where C is an arbitrary constant known as the constant of
of integrals.
integration. Essentially, the graphs of antiderivatives of a
In calculus, an antiderivative, primitive function, given function are vertical translations of each other; each
graphs vertical location depending upon the value of C.
In physics, the integration of acceleration yields velocity
plus a constant. The constant is the initial velocity term
that would be lost upon taking the derivative of velocity
because the derivative of a constant term is zero. This
same pattern applies to further integrations and derivatives of motion (position, velocity, acceleration, and so
on).

2 Uses and properties


Antiderivatives are important because they can be used to
compute denite integrals, using the fundamental theorem of calculus: if F is an antiderivative of the integrable
function f and f is continuous over the interval [a, b],
then:
The slope eld of F(x) = (x3 /3)-(x2 /2)-x+c, showing three of
the innitely many solutions that can be produced by varying the
arbitrary constant C.

primitive integral or indenite integral[1] of a function


f is a dierentiable function F whose derivative is equal
to the original function f. This can be stated symbolically
as F = f.[2][3] The process of solving for antiderivatives
is called antidierentiation (or indenite integration)
and its opposite operation is called dierentiation, which
is the process of nding a derivative.

Because of this, each of the innitely many antiderivatives of a given function f is sometimes called the general integral or indenite integral of f and is written
using the integral symbol with no bounds:

f (x) dx = F (b) F (a).


a

f (x) dx.

Antiderivatives are related to denite integrals through


the fundamental theorem of calculus: the denite integral of a function over an interval is equal to the dierence between the values of an antiderivative evaluated at
the endpoints of the interval.

If F is an antiderivative of f, and the function f is dened


on some interval, then every other antiderivative G of f
diers from F by a constant: there exists a number C such
that G(x) = F(x) + C for all x. C is called the arbitrary
constant
of integration. If the domain of F is a disjoint
The discrete equivalent of the notion of antiderivative is
union
of
two or more intervals, then a dierent constant
antidierence.
of integration may be chosen for each of the intervals.
For instance

Example

{
1
The function F(x) = x3 /3 is an antiderivative of f(x) = F (x) = x + C1 x < 0
x1 + C2 x > 0
x2 . As the derivative of a constant is zero, x2 will have
3
3
an innite number of antiderivatives, such as x /3, x /3 +
1, x3 /3 - 2, etc. Thus, all the antiderivatives of x2 can be is the most general antiderivative of f (x) = 1/x2 on its
obtained by changing the value of C in F(x) = x3 /3 + C; natural domain (, 0) (0, ).
1

4 ANTIDERIVATIVES OF NON-CONTINUOUS FUNCTIONS

Every continuous function f has an antiderivative, and


one antiderivative F is given by the denite integral of
f with variable upper boundary:

f (t) dt.

F (x) =
0

Varying the lower boundary produces other antiderivatives (but not necessarily all possible antiderivatives).
This is another formulation of the fundamental theorem
of calculus.
There are many functions whose antiderivatives, even
though they exist, cannot be expressed in terms of
elementary functions (like polynomials, exponential
functions, logarithms, trigonometric functions, inverse
trigonometric functions and their combinations). Examples of these are

ex dx,
2

sin x2 dx,

sin x
dx,
x

the Risch algorithm


when integrating multiple times, certain additional
techniques can be used, see for instance double integrals and polar coordinates, the Jacobian and the
Stokes theorem
if a function has no elementary antiderivative (for
instance, exp(-x2 )), its denite integral can be approximated using numerical integration
it is often convenient to algebraically manipulate
the integrand such that other integration techniques,
such as integration by substitution, may be used.
to calculate the (n times) repeated antiderivative of
a function f, Cauchy's formula is useful (cf. Cauchy
formula for repeated integration):

xn1

x
1 x x1
(x t)n1
x
dx,
. . . x dx.f (xn ) dxn . . . dx2 dx1 =
f (t)
dt.
ln xx0 x0
(n 1)!
x0
x0

From left to right, the rst four are the error function,
the Fresnel function, the trigonometric integral, and the Computer algebra systems can be used to automate some
or all of the work involved in the symbolic techniques
logarithmic integral function.
above, which is particularly useful when the algebraic maSee also Dierential Galois theory for a more detailed nipulations involved are very complex or lengthy. Intediscussion.
grals which have already been derived can be looked up
in a table of integrals.

Techniques of integration
4 Antiderivatives

of

non-

Finding antiderivatives of elementary functions is often


continuous functions
considerably harder than nding their derivatives. For
some elementary functions, it is impossible to nd an antiderivative in terms of other elementary functions. See Non-continuous functions can have antiderivatives.
the article on elementary functions for further informa- While there are still open questions in this area, it is
known that:
tion.
There are various methods available:
the linearity of integration allows us to break complicated integrals into simpler ones
integration by substitution, often combined with
trigonometric identities or the natural logarithm
the inverse chain rule method, a special case
of integration by substitution

Some highly pathological functions with large sets


of discontinuities may nevertheless have antiderivatives.
In some cases, the antiderivatives of such pathological functions may be found by Riemann integration,
while in other cases these functions are not Riemann
integrable.

integration by parts to integrate products of func- Assuming that the domains of the functions are open intervals:
tions
Inverse function integration, a formula that expresses the antiderivative of the inverse f 1 of an
invertible and continuous function f in terms of the
antiderivative of f and of f 1 .
the method of partial fractions in integration allows
us to integrate all rational functions (fractions of two
polynomials)

A necessary, but not sucient, condition for a function f to have an antiderivative is that f have the
intermediate value property. That is, if [a, b] is a
subinterval of the domain of f and C is any real number between f(a) and f(b), then f(c) = C for some c
between a and b. To see this, let F be an antiderivative of f and consider the continuous function

4.1

Some examples

g(x) = F (x) Cx

antiderivative
x F may be obtained by integration:
F (x) = 0 f (t) dt .

on the closed interval [a, b]. Then g must have either a


maximum or minimum c in the open interval (a, b) and
so

2. The function
f (x) = 2x sin

0 = g (c) = f (c) C.
The set of discontinuities of f must be a meagre set.
This set must also be an F-sigma set (since the set
of discontinuities of any function must be of this
type). Moreover for any meagre F-sigma set, one
can construct some function f having an antiderivative, which has the given set as its set of discontinuities.
If f has an antiderivative, is bounded on closed nite
subintervals of the domain and has a set of discontinuities of Lebesgue measure 0, then an antiderivative may be found by integration in the sense of
Lebesgue. In fact, using more powerful integrals
like the HenstockKurzweil integral, every function
for which an antiderivative exists is integrable, and
its general integral coincides with its antiderivative.
If f has an antiderivative F on a closed interval
[a,b], then for any choice of partition a = x0 <
x1 < x2 < < xn = b , if one chooses
sample points xi [xi1 , xi ] as specied by the
mean value theorem, then the corresponding Riemann sum telescopes to the value F(b) F(a).
n

f (xi )(xi xi1 ) =

[F (xi ) F (xi1 )]

i=1

i=1

1
x2

2
cos
x

1
x2

with f (0) = 0 is not continuous at x = 0 but has


the antiderivative
(
F (x) = x2 sin

1
x2

with F (0) = 0 . Unlike Example 1, f(x) is unbounded in any interval containing 0, so the Riemann integral is undened.
3. If f(x) is the function in Example 1 and F is its antiderivative, and {xn }n1 is a dense countable subset of the open interval (1, 1) , then the function
g(x) =

f (x xn )
2n
n=1

has an antiderivative

G(x) =

F (x xn )
.
2n
n=1

The set of discontinuities of g is precisely the set


{xn }n1 . Since g is bounded on closed nite intervals and the set of discontinuities has measure 0,
the antiderivative G may be found by integration.

= F (xn ) F (x0 ) = F (b) F (a) 4. Let {xn }n1 be a dense countable subset of the
open interval (1, 1) . Consider the everywhere
However if f is unbounded, or if f is bounded
continuous strictly increasing function
but the set of discontinuities of f has positive

1
Lebesgue measure, a dierent choice of samF
(x)
=
(x xn )1/3 .
n
ple points xi may give a signicantly dierent
2
n=1
value for the Riemann sum, no matter how ne
It can be shown that
the partition. See Example 4 below.

4.1

Some examples

1. The function
f (x) = 2x sin

( )
( )
1
1
cos
x
x

with f (0) = 0 is not continuous at x = 0 but has


the antiderivative
( )
1
F (x) = x2 sin
x
with F (0) = 0 . Since f is bounded on closed
nite intervals and is only discontinuous at 0, the

F (x) =

1
(x xn )2/3
n
3

2
n=1

for all values x where the series converges, and that


the graph of F(x) has vertical tangent lines at all
other values of x. In particular the graph has vertical tangent lines at all points in the set {xn }n1
.
Moreover F (x) 0 for all x where the derivative
is dened. It follows that the inverse function G =
F 1 is dierentiable everywhere and that
g (x) = G (x) = 0

6 NOTES
the other hand if the Riemann integral is replaced
by the Lebesgue integral, then Fatous lemma or the
dominated convergence theorem shows that g does
satisfy the fundamental theorem of calculus in that
context.
5. In Examples 3 and 4, the sets of discontinuities of
the functions g are dense only in a nite open interval (a, b) . However these examples can be easily
modied so as to have sets of discontinuities which
are dense on the entire real line (, ) . Let
(x) =

a + b b a 1
+
tan x.
2

Then g ((x)) (x) has a dense set of discontinuities on (, ) and has antiderivative G .
6. Using a similar method as in Example 5, one can
modify g in Example 4 so as to vanish at all rational
numbers. If one uses a naive version of the Riemann
integral dened as the limit of left-hand or righthand Riemann sums over regular partitions, one will
obtain that the integral of such a function g over an
interval [a, b] is 0 whenever a and b are both rational, instead of G (b)G (a) . Thus the fundamental
theorem of calculus will fail spectacularly.

Figure 1.

5 See also
Antiderivative (complex analysis)
Lists of integrals
Symbolic integration
Area
Figure 2.

for all x in the set {F (xn )}n1 which is dense in the


interval [F (1) , F (1)] . Thus g has an antiderivative G. On the other hand, it can not be true that

F (1)

g(x) dx = GF (1) GF (1) = 2,


F (1)

since for any partition of [F (1) , F (1)] , one can


choose sample points for the Riemann sum from the
set {F (xn )}n1 , giving a value of 0 for the sum. It
follows that g has a set of discontinuities of positive
Lebesgue measure. Figure 1 on the right shows an
approximation to the graph of g(x) where {xn =
cos(n)}n1 and the series is truncated to 8 terms.
Figure 2 shows the graph of an approximation to the
antiderivative G(x), also truncated to 8 terms. On

6 Notes
[1] Antiderivatives are also called general integrals, and
sometimes integrals. The latter term is generic, and
refers not only to indenite integrals (antiderivatives), but
also to denite integrals. When the word integral is used
without additional specication, the reader is supposed to
deduce from the context whether it is referred to a denite or indenite integral. Some authors dene the indefinite integral of a function as the set of its innitely many
possible antiderivatives. Others dene it as an arbitrarily
selected element of that set. Wikipedia adopts the latter
approach.
[2] Stewart, James (2008). Calculus: Early Transcendentals
(6th ed.). Brooks/Cole. ISBN 0-495-01166-5.
[3] Larson, Ron; Edwards, Bruce H. (2009). Calculus (9th
ed.). Brooks/Cole. ISBN 0-547-16702-4.

References
Introduction to Classical Real Analysis, by Karl R.
Stromberg; Wadsworth, 1981 (see also)
Historical Essay On Continuity Of Derivatives, by
Dave L. Renfro; http://groups.google.com/group/
sci.math/msg/814be41b1ea8c024

External links
Wolfram Integrator Free online symbolic integration with Mathematica
Mathematical Assistant on Web symbolic computations online. Allows to integrate in small steps
(with hints for next step (integration by parts, substitution, partial fractions, application of formulas and
others), powered by Maxima
Function Calculator from WIMS
Integral
Antiderivatives and indenite integrals " at the
Khan Academy
Free online integral calculator with step by step solution "

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