A Damped SWIFT Method for European Option Pricing: Coefficients Decay, Truncation, and Error Analysis

Abstract

We introduce a damped variant of the Shannon Wavelet Inverse Fourier Technique (SWIFT) for pricing European options when the characteristic function of the underlying model is available. The key idea is to apply an exponential damping transformation to the payoff, which enables the direct computation of Fourier coefficients in the frequency domain without introducing an additional physical-domain truncation parameter. We provide a rigorous analysis of the decay of these coefficients by exploiting the singularity structure of the associated Fourier transforms. For light-tailed models, we obtain Gaussian-type decay estimates, while for semi-heavy and heavy-tailed models whose singularities are poles, algebraic branch points, or logarithmic branch points, we derive exponential decay bounds with explicit polynomial prefactors. The resulting sharp bounds make it possible to truncate the Fourier series without relying on the cumulants of the underlying density, which are often unavailable or difficult to compute in practice. We further derive an error decomposition separating projection, truncation, and quadrature errors, and translate the analysis into practical rules for selecting the damping parameter, resolution level, and truncation range. Numerical experiments demonstrate that the proposed approach consistently improves the accuracy of the original SWIFT method while requiring a significantly smaller number of Fourier coefficients and remaining stable in cases where the undamped method deteriorates.