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pythonsympysymbolic-math

Sympy computing the inverse laplace transform


I am having some trouble computing the inverse laplace transform of a symbolic expression using sympy. In matlab and in the book I am working from the expression s/(s^2 + w^2) transforms to cos(wt).

When I attempt to do this using sympy like so:

expression = s/(s**2+w**2)
Answer = sympy.inverse_laplace_transform(expression, s, t)

I get that

Answer = (-I*exp(2*t*im(w))*sin(t*re(w)) + exp(2*t*im(w))*cos(t*re(w)) + I*sin(t*re(w)) + cos(t*re(w)))*exp(-t*im(w))*Heaviside(t)/2

What am I doing wrong?


Solution

  • Sympy assumes that w is complex-valued. The simpler approach is to provide the option real=True in the definition of the symbol.

    s, t = sp.symbols('s, t')
    w = sp.symbols('w', real = True)
    expression = s/(s**2+w**2)
    
    sympy.inverse_laplace_transform(expression, s, t)
    

    cos(t*w)*Heaviside(t)