Numerical evaluation of Airy functions with complex arguments (Q1184603)

The authors give two methods for the evaluation of Airy functions of complex argument. The first method is based on the Taylor series expansion or an asymptotic expansion of each function. This method is accurate to any desired precision but is slow an unsuitable for fixed- precision languages. The second method extends a known idea to the complex plane, which is accurate to double precision (12 digits) and is suitable for programming in Fortran. It actually uses the first method to obtain a grid of points in the complex plane where the functions are known to high precision and then uses Taylor series from these base points. This makes the algorithm accurate and efficient.