Develop Reference

Performance issue with Scipy's solve_bvp and coupled differential equations

I'm facing a problem while trying to implement the coupled differential equation below (also known as single-mode coupling equation) in Python 3.8.3. As for the solver, I am using Scipy's function scipy.integrate.solve_bvp, whose documentation can be read here. I want to solve the equations in the complex domain, for different values of the propagation axis (z) and different values of beta (beta_analysis).
The problem is that it is extremely slow (not manageable) compared with an equivalent implementation in Matlab using the functions bvp4c, bvpinit and bvpset. Evaluating the first few iterations of both executions, they return the same result, except for the resulting mesh which is a lot greater in the case of Scipy. The mesh sometimes even saturates to the maximum value.
The equation to be solved is shown here below, along with the boundary conditions function.
import h5py
import numpy as np
from scipy import integrate
def coupling_equation(z_mesh, a):
ka_z = k # Global
z_a = z # Global
a_p = np.empty_like(a).astype(complex)
for idx, z_i in enumerate(z_mesh):
beta_zf_i = np.interp(z_i, z_a, beta_zf) # Get beta at the desired point of the mesh
ka_z_i = np.interp(z_i, z_a, ka_z) # Get ka at the desired point of the mesh
coupling_matrix = np.empty((2, 2), complex)
coupling_matrix[0] = [-1j * beta_zf_i, ka_z_i]
coupling_matrix[1] = [ka_z_i, 1j * beta_zf_i]
a_p[:, idx] = np.matmul(coupling_matrix, a[:, idx]) # Solve the coupling matrix
return a_p
def boundary_conditions(a_a, a_b):
return np.hstack(((a_a[0]-1), a_b[1]))
Moreover, I couldn't find a way to pass k, z and beta_zf as arguments of the function coupling_equation, given that the fun argument of the solve_bpv function must be a callable with the parameters (x, y). My approach is to define some global variables, but I would appreciate any help on this too if there is a better solution.
The analysis function which I am trying to code is:
def analysis(k, z, beta_analysis, max_mesh):
s11_analysis = np.empty_like(beta_analysis, dtype=complex)
s21_analysis = np.empty_like(beta_analysis, dtype=complex)
initial_mesh = np.linspace(z[0], z[-1], 10) # Initial mesh of 10 samples along L
mesh = initial_mesh
# a_init must be complex in order to solve the problem in a complex domain
a_init = np.vstack((np.ones(np.size(initial_mesh)).astype(complex),
np.zeros(np.size(initial_mesh)).astype(complex)))
for idx, beta in enumerate(beta_analysis):
print(f"Iteration {idx}: beta_analysis = {beta}")
global beta_zf
beta_zf = beta * np.ones(len(z)) # Global variable so as to use it in coupling_equation(x, y)
a = integrate.solve_bvp(fun=coupling_equation,
bc=boundary_conditions,
x=mesh,
y=a_init,
max_nodes=max_mesh,
verbose=1)
# mesh = a.x # Mesh for the next iteration
# a_init = a.y # Initial guess for the next iteration, corresponding to the current solution
s11_analysis[idx] = a.y[1][0]
s21_analysis[idx] = a.y[0][-1]
return s11_analysis, s21_analysis
I suspect that the problem has something to do with the initial guess that is being passed to the different iterations (see commented lines inside the loop in the analysis function). I try to set the solution of an iteration as the initial guess for the following (which must reduce the time needed for the solver), but it is even slower, which I don't understand. Maybe I missed something, because it is my first time trying to solve differential equations.
The parameters used for the execution are the following:
f2 = h5py.File(r'path/to/file', 'r')
k = np.array(f2['k']).squeeze()
z = np.array(f2['z']).squeeze()
f2.close()
analysis_points = 501
max_mesh = 1e6
beta_0 = 3e2;
beta_low = 0; # Lower value of the frequency for the analysis
beta_up = beta_0; # Upper value of the frequency for the analysis
beta_analysis = np.linspace(beta_low, beta_up, analysis_points);
s11_analysis, s21_analysis = analysis(k, z, beta_analysis, max_mesh)
Any ideas on how to improve the performance of these functions? Thank you all in advance, and sorry if the question is not well-formulated, I accept any suggestions about this.
Edit: Added some information about performance and sizing of the problem.
In practice, I can't find a relation that determines de number of times coupling_equation is called. It must be a matter of the internal operation of the solver. I checked the number of callings in one iteration by printing a line, and it happened in 133 ocasions (this was one of the fastests). This must be multiplied by the number of iterations of beta. For the analyzed one, the solver returned this:
Solved in 11 iterations, number of nodes 529.
Maximum relative residual: 9.99e-04
Maximum boundary residual: 0.00e+00
The shapes of a and z_mesh are correlated, since z_mesh is a vector whose length corresponds with the size of the mesh, recalculated by the solver each time it calls coupling_equation. Given that a contains the amplitudes of the progressive and regressive waves at each point of z_mesh, the shape of a is (2, len(z_mesh)).
In terms of computation times, I only managed to achieve 19 iterations in about 2 hours with Python. In this case, the initial iterations were faster, but they start to take more time as their mesh grows, until the point that the mesh saturates to the maximum allowed value. I think this is because of the value of the input coupling coefficients in that point, because it also happens when no loop in beta_analysisis executed (just the solve_bvp function for the intermediate value of beta). Instead, Matlab managed to return a solution for the entire problem in just 6 minutes, aproximately. If I pass the result of the last iteration as initial_guess (commented lines in the analysis function, the mesh overflows even faster and it is impossible to get more than a couple iterations.

Based on semi-random inputs, we can see that max_mesh is sometimes reached. This means that coupling_equation can be called with a quite big z_mesh and a arrays. The problem is that coupling_equation contains a slow pure-Python loop iterating on each column of the arrays. You can speed the computation up a lot using Numpy vectorization. Here is an implementation:
def coupling_equation_fast(z_mesh, a):
ka_z = k # Global
z_a = z # Global
a_p = np.empty(a.shape, dtype=np.complex128)
beta_zf_i = np.interp(z_mesh, z_a, beta_zf) # Get beta at the desired point of the mesh
ka_z_i = np.interp(z_mesh, z_a, ka_z) # Get ka at the desired point of the mesh
# Fast manual matrix multiplication
a_p[0] = (-1j * beta_zf_i) * a[0] + ka_z_i * a[1]
a_p[1] = ka_z_i * a[0] + (1j * beta_zf_i) * a[1]
return a_p
This code provides a similar output with semi-random inputs compared to the original implementation but is roughly 20 times faster on my machine.
Furthermore, I do not know if max_mesh happens to be big with your inputs too and even if this is normal/intended. It may make sense to decrease the value of max_mesh in order to reduce the execution time even more.

Why ifft2 is not working but fft2 is fine?

I want to implement ifft2 using DFT matrix. The following code works for fft2.
import numpy as np
def DFT_matrix(N):
i, j = np.meshgrid(np.arange(N), np.arange(N))
omega = np.exp( - 2 * np.pi * 1j / N )
W = np.power( omega, i * j ) # Normalization by sqrt(N) Not included
return W
sizeM=40
sizeN=20
np.random.seed(0)
rA=np.random.rand(sizeM,sizeN)
rAfft=np.fft.fft2(rA)
dftMtxM=DFT_matrix(sizeM)
dftMtxN=DFT_matrix(sizeN)
# Matrix multiply the 3 matrices together
mA = dftMtxM # rA # dftMtxN
print(np.allclose(np.abs(mA), np.abs(rAfft)))
print(np.allclose(np.angle(mA), np.angle(rAfft)))
To get to ifft2 I assumd I need to change only the dft matrix to it's transpose, so expected the following to work, but I got false for the last two print any suggesetion please?
import numpy as np
def DFT_matrix(N):
i, j = np.meshgrid(np.arange(N), np.arange(N))
omega = np.exp( - 2 * np.pi * 1j / N )
W = np.power( omega, i * j ) # Normalization by sqrt(N) Not included
return W
sizeM=40
sizeN=20
np.random.seed(0)
rA=np.random.rand(sizeM,sizeN)
rAfft=np.fft.ifft2(rA)
dftMtxM=np.conj(DFT_matrix(sizeM))
dftMtxN=np.conj(DFT_matrix(sizeN))
# Matrix multiply the 3 matrices together
mA = dftMtxM # rA # dftMtxN
print(np.allclose(np.abs(mA), np.abs(rAfft)))
print(np.allclose(np.angle(mA), np.angle(rAfft)))

I am going to be building on some things from my answer to your previous question. Please note that I will try to distinguish between the terms Discrete Fourier Transform (DFT) and Fast Fourier Transform (FFT). Remember that DFT is the transform while FFT is only an efficient algorithm for performing it. People, including myself, however very commonly refer to the DFT as FFT since it is practically the only algorithm used for computing the DFT
The problem here is again the normalization of the data. It's interesting that this is such a fundamental and confusing part of any DFT operations yet I couldn't find a good explanation on the internet. I will try to provide a summary at the end about DFT normalization however I think the best way to understand this is by working through some examples yourself.
Why the comparisons fail?
It's important to note, that even though both of the allclose tests seemingly fail, they are actually not a very good method of comparing two complex number arrays.
Difference between two angles
In particular, the problem is when it comes to comparing angles. If you just take the difference of two close angles that are on the border between -pi and pi, you can get a value that is around 2*pi. The allclose just takes differences between values and checks that they are bellow some threshold. Thus in our cases, it can report a false negative.
A better way to compare angles is something along the lines of this function:
def angle_difference(a, b):
diff = a - b
diff[diff < -np.pi] += 2*np.pi
diff[diff > np.pi] -= 2*np.pi
return diff
You can then take the maximum absolute value and check that it's bellow some threshold:
np.max(np.abs(angle_difference(np.angle(mA), np.angle(rAfft)))) < threshold
In the case of your example, the maximum difference was 3.072209153742733e-12.
So the angles are actually correct!
Magnitude scaling
We can get an idea of the issue is when we look at the magnitude ratio between the matrix iDFT and the library iFFT.
print(np.abs(mA)/np.abs(rAfft))
We find that all the values in mA are 800, which means that our absolute values are 800 times larger than those computed by the library. Suspiciously, 800 = 40 * 20, the dimensions of our data! I think you can see where I am going with this.
Confusing DFT normalization
We spot some indications why this is the case when we have a look at the FFT formulas as taken from the Numpy FFT documentation:
You will notice that while the forward transform doesn't normalize by anything. The reverse transform divides the output by 1/N. These are the 1D FFTs but the exact same thing applies in the 2D case, the inverse transform multiplies everything by 1/(N*M)
So in our example, if we update this line, we will get the magnitudes to agree:
mA = dftMtxM # rA/(sizeM * sizeN) # dftMtxN
A side note on comparing the outputs, an alternative way to compare complex numbers is to compare the real and imaginary components:
print(np.allclose(mA.real, rAfft.real))
print(np.allclose(mA.imag, rAfft.imag))
And we find that now indeed both methods agree.
Why all this normalization mess and which should I use?
The fundamental property of the DFT transform must satisfy is that iDFT(DFT(x)) = x. When you work through the math, you find that the product of the two coefficients before the sum has to be 1/N.
There is also something called the Parseval's theorem. In simple terms, it states that the energy in the signals is just the sum of square absolutes in both the time domain and frequency domain. For the FFT this boils down to this relationship:
Here is the function for computing the energy of a signal:
def energy(x):
return np.sum(np.abs(x)**2)
You are basically faced with a choice about the 1/N factor:
You can put the 1/N before the DFT sum. This makes senses as then the k=0 DC component will be equal to the average of the time domain values. However you will have to multiply the energy in frequency domain by N in order to match it with time domain frequency.
N = len(x)
X = np.fft.fft(x)/N # Compute the FFT scaled by `1/N`
# Energy related by `N`
np.allclose(energy(x), energy(X) * N) == True
# Perform some processing...
Y = X * H
y = np.fft.ifft(Y*N) # Compute the iFFT, remember to cancel out the built in `1/N` of ifft
You put the 1/N before the iDFT. This is, slightly counterintuitively, what most implementations, including Numpy do. I could not find a definitive consensus on the reasoning behind this, but I think it has something to do with the implementation efficiency. (If anyone has a better explanation for this, please leave it in the comments) As shown in the equations earlier, the energy in the frequency domain has to be divided by N to match the time domain energy.
N = len(x)
X = np.fft.fft(x) # Compute the FFT without scaling
# Energy, related by 1/N
np.allclose(energy(x), energy(X) / N) == True
# Perform some processing...
Y = X * H
y = np.fft.ifft(Y) # Compute the iFFT with the build in `1/N`
You can split the 1/N by placing 1/sqrt(N) before each of the transforms making them perfectly symmetric. In Numpy, you can provide the parameter norm="ortho" to the fft functions which will make them use the 1/sqrt(N) normalization instead: np.fft.fft(x, norm="ortho") The nice property here is that the energy now matches in both domains.
X = np.fft.fft(x, norm='orth') # Compute the FFT scaled by `1/sqrt(N)`
# Perform some processing...
# Energy are equal:
np.allclose(energy(x), energy(X)) == True
Y = X * H
y = np.fft.ifft(Y, norm='orth') # Compute the iFFT, with scaling by `1/sqrt(N)`
In the end it boils down to what you need. Most of the time the absolute magnitude of your DFT is actually not that important. You are mostly interested in the ratio of various components or you want to perform some operation in the frequency domain but then transform back to the time domain or you are interested in the phase (angles). In all of these case, the normalization does not really play an important role, as long as you stay consistent.

Bound solutions in scipy ode solver

I want to solve a high amount of bilinear ODE systems in python. The derivative is this:
def x_(x, t, growth, connections):
return x * growth + np.dot(connections, x) * x
I am not interested in very accurate results but in the qualitative behavior, i.e. whether a component goes to zero or not.
Because I have to solve such a big quantity of high-deminsional systems, I want to use a step size as big as possible.
Due to big step sizes it can happen that the ODE goes in one component below zero. This should not be possible since (because of the structure of the particular ODE) each component is bounded by zero. Hence - to prevent wrong results - I would like to set each component manually to zero once it is below.
Furtherly, in the systems that I want to solve it can happen that solutions blow up. I want to prevent this by setting an upper bound as well, i.e. if a value exceeds the bound it is set back to the value of the bound.
I hope I can make my goal understandable giving you the following pseudo-code of what I want to do:
for t in range(0, tEnd, dt):
$ compute x(t) using x(t-dt) $
x(t) = np.minimum(np.maximum(x(t), 0), upperBound)
I implemented this using a Runge-Kutta algorithm. Everything works fine. Just the performance is bad. Therefore, I would prefer using a pre-implemented method like scipy.integrate.odeint.
Thereby, I have no idea on how to set such bounds. An option that I tried was to manipulate the ODE that way, that the derivative becomes 0 once x is above the bound, and (positive) one once x is below 0. In addition, to prevent too high jumps within one timestep, I also bounded the derivative:
def x_(x, t, growth, connections, bound):
return (x > 0) * np.minimum((x < bound) * \
( x * growth + np.dot(connections, x) * x ), bound) + (x < 0)
Though this solution (especially for the zero-bound) is very ugly it would be sufficient if it worked. Unfortunately, it does not work. Using odeint
x = scipy.integrate.odeint(x_, x0, timesteps, param)
I get very often one of these two errors:
Repeated convergence failures (perhaps bad Jacobian or tolerances).
Excess work done on this call (perhaps wrong Dfun type).
They may be due to the discontinuities of my manipulated ODE. There are plenty of threads about these error messages on the internet but they did not help me. E.g. increasing the amount of allowed steps did neither prevent this issue nor is it a good solution for me since I need to use big step sizes. Furtherly, passing the Jacobian did not help either.
Having a look onto the solutions one can see that two types of strange behavior happen when the errors occure:
The solution blows in one single time-step up to +-1e250 (that should be impossible since dx/dt is bounded).
It first reaches the bound but goes down again (that should be impossible because x is at the bound and therefore x_ is 0).
I would appreciate all hints on how to solve the issue - no matter whether it is help on
how to prevent the errors in odeint
how to manipulate the ODE properly or on
how to write a very fast ODE solver where I can directly implement my needs.
I thank you in advance!
Edit
I was asked for a minimal example:
import numpy as np
import random as rd
rd.seed()
import scipy.integrate
def simulate(simParam, dim = 20, connectivity = .8, conRange = 1, threshold = 1E-3,
constGrowing=None):
"""
Creates the random system matrix and starts a simulation
"""
x0 = np.zeros(dim, dtype='float') + 1
connections = np.zeros(shape=(dim, dim), dtype='float')
growth = np.zeros(dim, dtype='float') +
(constGrowing if not constGrowing == None else 0)
for i in range(dim):
for j in range(dim):
if i != j:
connections[i][j] = rd.uniform(-conRange, conRange)
tend, step = simParam
return RK4NumPy(x_, (growth, connections), x0, 0, tend, step)
def x_(x, t, growth, connections, bound):
"""
Derivative of the ODE
"""
return (x > 0) * np.minimum((x < bound) *
(x * growth + np.dot(connections, x) * x), bound) + (x < 0)
def RK4NumPy(x_, param, x0, t0, tend, step, maxV = 1.0E2, silent=True):
"""
solving method
"""
param = param + (maxV,)
timesteps = np.arange(t0 + step, tend, step)
return scipy.integrate.odeint(x_, x0, timesteps, param)
simulate((300, 0.5))
To see the solution one would have to plot x. With the given parameters I get very often the above mentioned error
Excess work done on this call (perhaps wrong Dfun type).
Run with full_output = 1 to get quantitative information.

Fitting Fresnel Equations Using Scipy

I am attempting a non-linear fit of Fresnel equations with data of reflectance against angle of incidence. Found on this site http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fresnel_equations are two graphs that have a red and blue line. I need to basically fit the blue line when n1 = 1 to my data.
Here I use the following code where th is theta, the angle of incidence.
def Rperp(th, n, norm, constant):
numerator = np.cos(th) - np.sqrt(n**2.0 - np.sin(th)**2.0)
denominator = 1.0 * np.cos(th) + np.sqrt(n**2.0 - np.sin(th)**2.0)
return ((numerator / denominator)**2.0) * norm + constant
The parameters I'm looking for are:
the index of refraction n
some normalization to multiply by and
a constant to shift the baseline of the graph.
My attempt is the following:
xdata = angle[1:] * 1.0 # angle of incidence
ydata = greenDD[1:] # reflectance
params = curve_fit(Rperp, xdata, ydata)
What I get is a division of zero apparently and gives me [1, 1, 1] for the parameters. The Fresnel equation itself is the bit without the normalizer and the constant in Rperp. Theta in the equation is the angle of incidence also. Overall I am just not sure if I am doing this right at all to get the parameters.
The idea seems to be the first parameter in the function is the independent variable and the rest are the dependent variables going to be found. Then you just plug into scipy's curve_fit and it will give you a fit to your data for the parameters. If it is just getting around division of zero, which I had though might be integer division, then it seems like I should be set. Any help is appreciated and let me know if things need to be clarified (such as np is numpy).

Make sure to pass the arguments to the trigonometric functions, like sine, in radians, not degrees.
As for why you're getting a negative refractive index returned: it is because in your function, you're always squaring the refractive index. The curve_fit algorithm might end up in a local minimum state where (by accident) n is negative, because it has the same value as n positive.
Ideally, you'd add constraints to the minimization problem, but for this (simple) problem, just observe your formula and remember that a result of negative n is simply solved by changing the sign, as you did.
You could also try passing an initial guess to the algorithm and you might observe that it will not end up in the local minimum with negative value.

How to find all zeros of a function using numpy (and scipy)?

Suppose I have a function f(x) defined between a and b. This function can have many zeros, but also many asymptotes. I need to retrieve all the zeros of this function. What is the best way to do it?
Actually, my strategy is the following:
I evaluate my function on a given number of points
I detect whether there is a change of sign
I find the zero between the points that are changing sign
I verify if the zero found is really a zero, or if this is an asymptote
U = numpy.linspace(a, b, 100) # evaluate function at 100 different points
c = f(U)
s = numpy.sign(c)
for i in range(100-1):
if s[i] + s[i+1] == 0: # oposite signs
u = scipy.optimize.brentq(f, U[i], U[i+1])
z = f(u)
if numpy.isnan(z) or abs(z) > 1e-3:
continue
print('found zero at {}'.format(u))
This algorithm seems to work, except I see two potential problems:
It will not detect a zero that doesn't cross the x axis (for example, in a function like f(x) = x**2) However, I don't think it can occur with the function I'm evaluating.
If the discretization points are too far, there could be more that one zero between them, and the algorithm could fail finding them.
Do you have a better strategy (still efficient) to find all the zeros of a function?
I don't think it's important for the question, but for those who are curious, I'm dealing with characteristic equations of wave propagation in optical fiber. The function looks like (where V and ell are previously defined, and ell is an positive integer):
def f(u):
w = numpy.sqrt(V**2 - u**2)
jl = scipy.special.jn(ell, u)
jl1 = scipy.special.jnjn(ell-1, u)
kl = scipy.special.jnkn(ell, w)
kl1 = scipy.special.jnkn(ell-1, w)
return jl / (u*jl1) + kl / (w*kl1)

Why are you limited to numpy? Scipy has a package that does exactly what you want:
http://docs.scipy.org/doc/scipy/reference/optimize.nonlin.html
One lesson I've learned: numerical programming is hard, so don't do it :)
Anyway, if you're dead set on building the algorithm yourself, the doc page on scipy I linked (takes forever to load, btw) gives you a list of algorithms to start with. One method that I've used before is to discretize the function to the degree that is necessary for your problem. (That is, tune \delta x so that it is much smaller than the characteristic size in your problem.) This lets you look for features of the function (like changes in sign). AND, you can compute the derivative of a line segment (probably since kindergarten) pretty easily, so your discretized function has a well-defined first derivative. Because you've tuned the dx to be smaller than the characteristic size, you're guaranteed not to miss any features of the function that are important for your problem.
If you want to know what "characteristic size" means, look for some parameter of your function with units of length or 1/length. That is, for some function f(x), assume x has units of length and f has no units. Then look for the things that multiply x. For example, if you want to discretize cos(\pi x), the parameter that multiplies x (if x has units of length) must have units of 1/length. So the characteristic size of cos(\pi x) is 1/\pi. If you make your discretization much smaller than this, you won't have any issues. To be sure, this trick won't always work, so you may need to do some tinkering.

I found out it's relatively easy to implement your own root finder using the scipy.optimize.fsolve.
Idea: Find any zeroes from interval (start, stop) and stepsize step by calling the fsolve repeatedly with changing x0. Use relatively small stepsize to find all the roots.
Can only search for zeroes in one dimension (other dimensions must be fixed). If you have other needs, I would recommend using sympy for calculating the analytical solution.
Note: It may not always find all the zeroes, but I saw it giving relatively good results. I put the code also to a gist, which I will update if needed.
import numpy as np
import scipy
from scipy.optimize import fsolve
from matplotlib import pyplot as plt
# Defined below
r = RootFinder(1, 20, 0.01)
args = (90, 5)
roots = r.find(f, *args)
print("Roots: ", roots)
# plot results
u = np.linspace(1, 20, num=600)
fig, ax = plt.subplots()
ax.plot(u, f(u, *args))
ax.scatter(roots, f(np.array(roots), *args), color="r", s=10)
ax.grid(color="grey", ls="--", lw=0.5)
plt.show()
Example output:
Roots: [ 2.84599497 8.82720551 12.38857782 15.74736542 19.02545276]
zoom-in:
RootFinder definition
import numpy as np
import scipy
from scipy.optimize import fsolve
from matplotlib import pyplot as plt
class RootFinder:
def __init__(self, start, stop, step=0.01, root_dtype="float64", xtol=1e-9):
self.start = start
self.stop = stop
self.step = step
self.xtol = xtol
self.roots = np.array([], dtype=root_dtype)
def add_to_roots(self, x):
if (x < self.start) or (x > self.stop):
return # outside range
if any(abs(self.roots - x) < self.xtol):
return # root already found.
self.roots = np.append(self.roots, x)
def find(self, f, *args):
current = self.start
for x0 in np.arange(self.start, self.stop + self.step, self.step):
if x0 < current:
continue
x = self.find_root(f, x0, *args)
if x is None: # no root found.
continue
current = x
self.add_to_roots(x)
return self.roots
def find_root(self, f, x0, *args):
x, _, ier, _ = fsolve(f, x0=x0, args=args, full_output=True, xtol=self.xtol)
if ier == 1:
return x[0]
return None
Test function
The scipy.special.jnjn does not exist anymore, but I created similar test function for the case.
def f(u, V=90, ell=5):
w = np.sqrt(V ** 2 - u ** 2)
jl = scipy.special.jn(ell, u)
jl1 = scipy.special.yn(ell - 1, u)
kl = scipy.special.kn(ell, w)
kl1 = scipy.special.kn(ell - 1, w)
return jl / (u * jl1) + kl / (w * kl1)

The main problem I see with this is if you can actually find all roots --- as have already been mentioned in comments, this is not always possible. If you are sure that your function is not completely pathological (sin(1/x) was already mentioned), the next one is what's your tolerance to missing a root or several of them. Put differently, it's about to what length you are prepared to go to make sure you did not miss any --- to the best of my knowledge, there is no general method to isolate all the roots for you, so you'll have to do it yourself. What you show is a reasonable first step already. A couple of comments:
Brent's method is indeed a good choice here.
First of all, deal with the divergencies. Since in your function you have Bessels in the denominators, you can first solve for their roots -- better look them up in e.g., Abramovitch and Stegun (Mathworld link). This will be a better than using an ad hoc grid you're using.
What you can do, once you've found two roots or divergencies, x_1 and x_2, run the search again in the interval [x_1+epsilon, x_2-epsilon]. Continue until no more roots are found (Brent's method is guaranteed to converge to a root, provided there is one).
If you cannot enumerate all the divergencies, you might want to be a little more careful in verifying a candidate is indeed a divergency: given x don't just check that f(x) is large, check that, e.g. |f(x-epsilon/2)| > |f(x-epsilon)| for several values of epsilon (1e-8, 1e-9, 1e-10, something like that).
If you want to make sure you don't have roots which simply touch zero, look for the extrema of the function, and for each extremum, x_e, check the value of f(x_e).

I've also encountered this problem to solve equations like f(z)=0 where f was an holomorphic function. I wanted to be sure not to miss any zero and finally developed an algorithm which is based on the argument principle.
It helps to find the exact number of zeros lying in a complex domain. Once you know the number of zeros, it is easier to find them. There are however two concerns which must be taken into account :
Take care about multiplicity : when solving (z-1)^2 = 0, you'll get two zeros as z=1 is counting twice
If the function is meromorphic (thus contains poles), each pole reduce the number of zero and break the attempt to count them.