Lagrangian Manifolds and Efficient Short-Wave Asymptotics in a Neighborhood of a Caustic Cusp

Abstract

We develop an approach to writing efficient short-wave asymptotics based on the representation of the Maslov canonical operator in a neighborhood of generic caustics in the form of special functions of a composite argument. A constructive method is proposed that allows expressing the canonical operator near a caustic cusp corresponding to the Lagrangian singularity of type $$A_3$$ (standard cusp) in terms of the Pearcey function and its first derivatives. It is shown that, conversely, the representation of a Pearcey type integral via the canonical operator turns out to be a very simple way to obtain its asymptotics for large real values of the arguments in terms of Airy functions and WKB-type functions.