🔭 Bessel Functions

From futures trading to vibrating drums

Table of contents

Bessel functions are a fascinating family of mathematical functions with an astonishing range of applications, stretching far beyond their classical roots in physics and optics.

While they're celebrated for modeling wave propagation and heat diffusion, their elegance and utility quietly permeate disciplines many might find unexpected. In this series, I explore their lesser-known roles: from pricing financial derivatives and optimising machine learning kernels to unraveling cryptographic algorithms, counting combinatorial structures, and even decomposing matrices. By venturing into these unconventional territories—finance, cryptanalysis, combinatorics, and more—we’ll uncover how Bessel functions appear across the mathematical landscape.

A Deep Research series