What Is the Complexity of Surface Integration?

Abstract

We study the worst case complexity of computing ε-approximations of surface integrals. This problem has two sources of partial information: the integrand f and the function g defining the surface. The problem is nonlinear in its dependence on g. Here, f is an r times continuously differentiable scalar function of l variables, and g is an s times continuously differentiable injective function of d variables with l components. We must have d⩽l and s⩾1 for surface integration to be well-defined. Surface integration is related to the classical integration problem for functions of d variables that are min{r, s−1} times continuously differentiable. This might suggest that the complexity of surface integration should be Θ((1/ε)d/min{r, s−1}). Indeed, this holds when d<l and s=1, in which case the surface integration problem has infinite complexity. However, if d⩽l and s⩾2, we prove that the complexity of surface integration is O((1/ε)d/min{r, s}). Furthermore, this bound is sharp whenever d<l.