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Bessel potential

Mathematical potential

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Source updated October 10, 2025

In mathematics, the Bessel potential is a potential (named after Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel) similar to the Riesz potential but with better decay properties at infinity.

If s is a complex number with positive real part then the Bessel potential of order s is the operator

$(I-\Delta )^{-s/2}$

where Δ is the Laplace operator and the fractional power is defined using Fourier transforms.

Yukawa potentials are particular cases of Bessel potentials for $s=2$ in the 3-dimensional space.

01Representation in Fourier space

The Bessel potential acts by multiplication on the Fourier transforms: for each $\xi \in \mathbb {R} ^{d}$

${\mathcal {F}}((I-\Delta )^{-s/2}u)(\xi )={\frac {{\mathcal {F}}u(\xi )}{(1+4\pi ^{2}\vert \xi \vert ^{2})^{s/2}}}.$

02Integral representations

When $s>0$ , the Bessel potential on $\mathbb {R} ^{d}$ can be represented by

$(I-\Delta )^{-s/2}u=G_{s}\ast u,$

where the Bessel kernel $G_{s}$ is defined for $x\in \mathbb {R} ^{d}\setminus \{0\}$ by the integral formula

$G_{s}(x)={\frac {1}{(4\pi )^{s/2}\Gamma (s/2)}}\int _{0}^{\infty }{\frac {e^{-{\frac {\pi \vert x\vert ^{2}}{y}}-{\frac {y}{4\pi }}}}{y^{1+{\frac {d-s}{2}}}}}\,\mathrm {d} y.$

Here $\Gamma$ denotes the Gamma function. The Bessel kernel can also be represented for $x\in \mathbb {R} ^{d}\setminus \{0\}$ by

$G_{s}(x)={\frac {e^{-\vert x\vert }}{(2\pi )^{\frac {d-1}{2}}2^{\frac {s}{2}}\Gamma ({\frac {s}{2}})\Gamma ({\frac {d-s+1}{2}})}}\int _{0}^{\infty }e^{-\vert x\vert t}{\Big (}t+{\frac {t^{2}}{2}}{\Big )}^{\frac {d-s-1}{2}}\,\mathrm {d} t.$

This last expression can be more succinctly written in terms of a modified Bessel function, for which the potential gets its name:

$G_{s}(x)={\frac {1}{2^{(s-2)/2}(2\pi )^{d/2}\Gamma ({\frac {s}{2}})}}K_{(d-s)/2}(\vert x\vert )\vert x\vert ^{(s-d)/2}.$

03Asymptotics

At the origin, one has as $\vert x\vert \to 0$ ,

$G_{s}(x)={\frac {\Gamma ({\frac {d-s}{2}})}{2^{s}\pi ^{s/2}\vert x\vert ^{d-s}}}(1+o(1))\quad {\text{ if }}0<s<d,$

$G_{d}(x)={\frac {1}{2^{d-1}\pi ^{d/2}}}\ln {\frac {1}{\vert x\vert }}(1+o(1)),$

$G_{s}(x)={\frac {\Gamma ({\frac {s-d}{2}})}{2^{s}\pi ^{s/2}}}(1+o(1))\quad {\text{ if }}s>d.$

In particular, when $0<s<d$ the Bessel potential behaves asymptotically as the Riesz potential.

At infinity, one has, as $\vert x\vert \to \infty$ ,

$G_{s}(x)={\frac {e^{-\vert x\vert }}{2^{\frac {d+s-1}{2}}\pi ^{\frac {d-1}{2}}\Gamma ({\frac {s}{2}})\vert x\vert ^{\frac {d+1-s}{2}}}}(1+o(1)).$

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Sources and credits

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Bessel potential

01Representation in Fourier space

02Integral representations

03Asymptotics

Sources and credits

Related topics

Riesz potential

Differintegral

Sobolev space