Abstract
In the first part of this investigation, we considered the parameter differentiation of the Whittaker function . In this second part, first derivatives with respect to the parameters of the Whittaker function are calculated. Using the confluent hypergeometric function, these derivatives can be expressed as infinite sums of quotients of the digamma and gamma functions. Furthermore, it is possible to obtain these parameter derivatives in terms of infinite integrals, with integrands containing elementary functions (products of algebraic, exponential, and logarithmic functions), from the integral representation of . These infinite sums and integrals can be expressed in closed form for particular values of the parameters. Finally, an integral representation of the integral Whittaker function and its derivative with respect to , as well as some reduction formulas for the integral Whittaker functions and , are calculated.
Keywords:
derivatives with respect to parameters; Whittaker functions; integral Whittaker functions; incomplete gamma functions; sums of infinite series of psi and gamma; infinite integrals involving Bessel functions MSC:
33B15; 33B20; 33C10; 33C15; 33C20; 33C50; 33E20
1. Introduction
Two functions, and , were introduced to the mathematical literature by Whittaker [1] in 1903, and they are linearly independent solutions of the following second-order differential equation:
where and are parameters. For particular values of these parameters, the Whittaker functions and can be reduced to a variety of elementary and special functions (such as modified Bessel functions, incomplete gamma functions, parabolic cylinder functions, error functions, logarithmic and cosine integrals, as well as the generalized Hermite and Laguerre polynomials). Recently, Mainardi et al. [2] investigated the special case whereby the Wright function can be expressed in terms of Whittaker functions.
The Whittaker functions can be expressed as [3] (Eqn. 13.14.2):
and [3] (Eqn. 13.14.33):
where denotes the gamma function, and the Kummer function is defined as [4] (Eqn. 47:3:1):
where denotes the Pochhammer polynomial and
is the generalized hypergeometric function.
Also, the Whittaker function can be expressed as [3] (Eqn. 13.14.3):
where denotes the Tricomi function.
The analytical properties of the Whittaker functions (see [3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11]) are of great interest in mathematical physics, because these functions are involved in many applications, such as the solutions of the wave equation in paraboloidal coordinates, the behavior of charged particles in fields with Coulomb potentials, stationary Green’s functions in atomic and molecular calculations in quantum mechanics (i.e., the solution of the Schrödinger equation for a harmonic oscillator), probability density functions, and in many other physical and engineering problems [10,12,13,14].
Mostly, the Whittaker functions are regarded as a function of variable x with fixed values of parameters and , although there are a few investigations where mathematical operations associated with both parameters are considered, especially for the parameter [13,15,16,17]. In this context, it is worthwhile mentioning Laurenzi’s paper [13], where the calculation of the derivative of with respect to , when this parameter is an integer, is derived. In [17], Buschman showed that the derivative of with respect to the parameters can be expressed in terms of finite sums of these functions. Higher derivatives of the Whittaker functions with respect to parameter were discussed by Abad and Sesma [15], and integrals with respect to parameter by Becker [16]. Since the Whittaker functions are related to the confluent hypergeometric function, it is worth mentioning the investigation of the derivatives of generalized hypergeometric functions presented by Ancarini and Gasaneo [18] and Sofostasios and Brychkov [19].
The integral Whittaker functions were introduced by us [20] as follows:
In the first part of this investigation, we calculated some reduction formulas for the first derivatives, with respect to the parameters of the Whittaker function . In the current paper, the main attention will be devoted to the calculation of reduction formulas for the first parameter derivatives of the Whittaker function . For this purpose, we analyze the first derivative of this function with respect to the parameters from the corresponding series and integral representations. Direct differentiation of the Whittaker functions, leads to infinite sums of quotients of the digamma and gamma functions. It is possible to calculate these sums in closed form in some cases, with the aid of the MATHEMATICA program. When the integral representations of the Whittaker function are taken into account, the results of differentiation can be expressed in terms of Laplace transforms of elementary functions. Integrands of the these Laplace-type integrals include products of algebraic, exponential, and logarithmic functions. New groups of infinite integrals, comparable to those investigated by Kölbig [21], Geddes et al. [22], and Apelblat and Kravitzky [23], are calculated in this paper.
Also, we will focus our attention on the integral Whittaker functions and , in order to derive some new reduction formulas, as well as an integral representation of and its first derivative with respect to parameter .
2. Parameter Differentiation of via Kummer Function
Notation 1.
Unless indicated otherwise, it is assumed throughout the paper that x is a real variable and z is a complex variable.
Definition 1.
According to the notation introduced by Ancarini and Gasaneo [18,24], define
and
2.1. Derivative with Respect to the First Parameter
Theorem 1.
For , the following parameter derivative formula of holds true:
where denotes the lower incomplete gamma function (117).
Proof.
First, note that
since [3] (Eqn. 13.14.31):
Now, let us calculate . For this purpose, take in (12), to obtain
Note that, according to [3] (Eqn. 13.18.2)
Finally, according to the property [4] (Eqn. 44:5:3):
see that
Table 1 presents some explicit expressions for particular values of (13), obtained with the help of the MATHEMATICA program.
Table 1.
Derivative of with respect to , by using (13).
Next, we present another reduction formula of , from the result found in [13].
Theorem 2.
The following reduction formula holds true for
where denotes the Laguerre polynomial.
Proof.
First, note that according to (14), we have
Therefore, let us calculate . For this purpose, consider the formula [13]:
In Table 2 we collect some particular cases of (22), obtained with the help of the MATHEMATICA program.
Table 2.
Derivative of with respect to , by using (22).
Note that for , we obtain an indeterminate expression in (22). We calculate this particular case with a result in the next section.
Theorem 3.
The following reduction formula holds true:
where denotes the Meijer G-function.
2.2. Derivative with Respect to the Second Parameter
Theorem 4.
For , the following parameter derivative formula of holds true:
Proof.
Differentiate the following reduction formula with respect to parameter [3] (Eqn. 13.18.2):
to obtain
Table 3 shows the derivative of with respect to for particular values of and , using (29) and the help of the MATHEMATICA program.
Table 3.
Derivative of with respect to , by using (29).
Theorem 5.
The following parameter derivative formula of holds true:
where denotes the modified Bessel of the second kind (Macdonald function).
Proof.
Differentiate with respect to the expression [3] (Eqn. 13.18.9):
to obtain
as we wanted to prove. □
The order derivative of is given in terms of Meijer G-functions for , and [25]:
where is the modified Bessel function; or in terms of generalized hypergeometric functions for , , and [26]:
There are different expressions for the order derivatives of the Bessel functions [23,27]. This subject is summarized in [28], where general results are presented in terms of convolution integrals, and order derivatives of Bessel functions are found for particular values of the order.
Using (31), (33) and (34), some derivatives of with respect to have been calculated with the help of the MATHEMATICA program, and they are presented in Table 4.
Table 4.
Derivative of with respect to , by using (31).
3. Parameter Differentiation of via Integral Representations
3.1. Derivative with Respect to the First Parameter
Integral representations of the Whittaker function are given in the form of a Laplace transform for and [8] (Section 7.4.2):
and as the infinite integral:
In order to calculate the first derivative of with respect to parameter , let us introduce the following finite logarithmic integrals.
Definition 2.
For and , define:
Note that, from (39) and (40) we have
Theorem 6.
The following integral holds true for and :
where denotes the beta function.
Now, we derive a Lemma that will be applied throughout this section and the next one.
Lemma 1.
Proof.
Split the integral into two terms as follows:
and apply the Laplace transform for [9] (Eqn. 2.5.2(4)) (it is worth noting that there is an incorrect sign in the reference cited):
to obtain
and
Note that, according to Kummer’s transformation (11), and to the reduction formula [9] (Eqn. 7.11.1(14)):
we have for
thus (44) becomes
Next, apply the transformation formula [9] (Eqn. 7.12.1(7)):
taking and , and applying again (46), to arrive at
Theorem 7.
The following integral holds true for and :
Remark 1.
If we insert (48) in (53), we obtain the following alternative form:
Theorem 8.
The following reduction formula holds true for and :
Proof.
Remark 2.
If we consider (54), we obtain the following alternative form:
Table 5 shows the first derivative of with respect to parameter for some particular values of and , and , calculated with the aid of the MATHEMATICA program from (57). Note that the function that appears in Table 5 denotes the imaginary error function [29] (Eqn. (2.3.1)).
Table 5.
Derivative of with respect to , by using (57).
Notice that for , we obtain an indeterminate expression in (55) and (57). For these cases, we present the following result.
Theorem 9.
The following reduction formula holds true for :
Proof.
Take in (57) and perform the limit
On the one hand, let us prove the following asymptotic formulas for
In order to prove (60), consider [4] (Eqn. 44:5:4)
thus, knowing that [29] (Eqn. 1.3.6)
and performing the substitution , we have
where denotes the n-th harmonic number. In order to prove (61), note that and for we have the expansion [4] (Eqn. 44:6:2)
Finally, notice that (62) follows directly from [29] (Eqn. 1.1.5). Therefore, taking into account (60)–(62), and taking into account (51), we conclude
On the other hand, consider the reduction Formula (A6), derived in the Appendix B,
and the formula [3] (Eqn. 8.4.15)
where denotes the exponential integral [3] (Eqn. 6.2.1), which is defined as
where the path does not cross the negative real axis or pass through the origin. Furthermore, consider the property [3] (Eqn. 6.2.4)
Remark 3.
It is worth noting that from [17],
where and are integers of like parity, we can derive an equivalent reduction formula to (58). Indeed, taking , (69) is reduced to
Note that from (28), we have
Perform the index substitution and exchange the sum order in (73), to arrive at
By virtue of the binomial theorem, the inner sum in (74) is just , thus we finally obtain:
Theorem 10.
For , and , the following integral holds true:
Proof.
Now, take into account (66), to get
Finally, note that using the exponential polynomial, defined as
and the property for [4] (Eqn. 45:4:2):
we calculate the following finite sum as:
Theorem 11.
For , the following reduction formula holds true:
Proof.
Theorem 12.
For , and , the following integral holds true:
Proof.
Applying the binomial theorem to (37) for and , we have
Now, take into account (66), to obtain
Finally, consider [3] (Eqns. 10.47.9,12)
where is the modified spherical Bessel function of the second kind, to arrive at the desired result. □
Theorem 13.
For , the following reduction formula holds true:
Proof.
Take and in (39), to obtain
Consider [29] (Eqn. 1.3.7)
and [3] (Eqn. 13.18.9)
Table 6 shows the first derivative of with respect to parameter for some particular values of and , calculated with the aid of the MATHEMATICA program, from (58), (80), and (85). Note that, in Table 6 the and the functions appear, which denote the sine and cosine integrals [3] (Eqns. 6.2.15–16).
Table 6.
First derivative of with respect to parameter for particular values of and .
3.2. Application to the Calculation of Infinite Integrals
Additional integral representations of the Whittaker function in terms of Bessel functions [8] (Section 7.4.2) are known:
Let us introduce the following infinite logarithmic integral.
Definition 3.
Theorem 14.
3.3. Derivative with Respect to the Second Parameter
First, note that
since (15) is satisfied. Next, let us introduce the following definitions in order to calculate the first derivative of with respect to parameter .
Direct differentiation of (5) yields:
Definition 5.
For and , define:
These integrals are interrelated by
Differentiation of (35) with respect to parameter gives
Theorem 15.
Proof.
Theorem 16.
For and , the following reduction formula holds true:
Proof.
Remark 4.
Table 7 shows the first derivative of with respect to parameter for some particular values of and , with , calculated from (103) with the aid of the MATHEMATICA program.
Table 7.
Derivative of with respect to , by using (103).
Notice that for , we obtain an indeterminate expression in (101) or (103). For these cases, we present the following result.
Theorem 17.
The following reduction formula holds true for :
Remark 5.
It is worth noting that from [17],
where and are integers of like parity, we can derive an equivalent reduction formula to (104). Indeed, following similar steps as in Remark 3, we arrive at:
Theorem 18.
For , the following reduction formula holds true:
Proof.
Theorem 19.
For , the following reduction formula holds true:
Proof.
4. Integral Whittaker Functions and
In [20], we found some reduction formulas for the integral Whittaker function . Next, we derive some new reduction formulas for and from reduction formulas of the Whittaker function .
Theorem 20.
The following reduction formula holds true for and :
Proof.
According to [3] (Eqn. 13.18.17)
where [29] (Eqn. 4.17.2)
denotes the Laguerre polynomials. Insert (116) into (115) and integrate term by term according to the definition of the integral Whittaker function (6), to get
Finally, take into account the definition of the lower incomplete gamma function [3] (Eqn. 8.2.1):
and simplify the result, to arrive at (114), as we wanted to prove. □
Remark 6.
Taking in (114), we recover the formula given in [20].
Theorem 21.
The following reduction formula holds true for , and :
where denotes the upper incomplete gamma function (119).
Proof.
Follow similar steps as in the previous theorem, but consider the definition of the upper incomplete gamma function [3] (Eqn. 8.2.2):
□
Theorem 22.
The following reduction formula holds true for , and :
Proof.
Theorem 23.
For and , the following integral representation holds true:
Proof.
According to (7) and (35), we have
Remark 7.
It is worth noting that we cannot follow the above steps to derive the integral representation of , because the corresponding integral does not converge, except for some special cases such as the ones given in (114).
Theorem 24.
For and , the following integral representation holds true:
5. Conclusions
The Whittaker function is defined in terms of the Tricomi function, hence its derivative with respect to the parameters and can be expressed as infinite sums of quotients of the digamma and gamma functions. In addition, the parameter differentiation of some integral representations of leads to infinite integrals of elementary functions. These sums and integrals have been calculated for some particular cases of the parameters and , in closed form. As an application of these results, we have calculated an infinite integral containing the Macdonald function. It is worth noting, that all the results presented in this paper have been both numerically and symbolically checked with the MATHEMATICA program.
In Appendix A, we calculate a reduction formula for the first derivative of the Kummer function, i.e., , which is necessary for the derivation of Theorem 1.
In Appendix B, we calculate a reduction formula of the hypergeometric function for a non-negative integer m, since it is not found in most common literature, such as [9]. This reduction formula is used throughout Section 3 in order to simplify the results obtained.
Finally, we collect some reduction formulas for the Whittaker function in Appendix C.
Author Contributions
Conceptualization, A.A. and J.L.G.-S.; methodology, A.A. and J.L.G.-S.; resources, A.A.; writing—original draft, A.A. and J.L.G.-S.; writing—review and editing, A.A. and J.L.G.-S. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.
Funding
This research received no external funding.
Data Availability Statement
Not applicable.
Acknowledgments
We are grateful to Francesco Mainardi from the Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Bologna, Bologna, Italy, for his kind encouragement and interest in our work.
Conflicts of Interest
The authors declare no conflict of interest.
Appendix A. Calculation of G(1) (a; a; z)
Theorem A1.
The following reduction formula holds true:
Proof.
According to the definition of the Kummer function (3), we have
Taking into account [4] (Eqn. 18:5:7)
and the definition of the generalized hypergeometric function (4), we may recast (A2) as
thus, for , we obtain (it is worth noting that there is an error in (Eqn. 7.12.1(5)) in [9])
Finally, differentiate Kummer’s transformation formula (11) with respect to the first parameter, to obtain:
Appendix B. Calculation of 2F2 (1, 1; 2, 2 + m; x)
Theorem A2.
For , the following reduction formula holds true:
where denotes the complementary exponential integral.
Proof.
Consider the function
thus
and by induction
Now, apply the repeated integral formula [3] (Eqn. 1.4.31)
to obtain
Use the binomial theorem to expand (A7) as
According to [3] (Eqn. 6.2.3), we have
Further, taking into account the definition of the lower incomplete gamma function [4] (Eqn. 45:3:1), we calculate for
Appendix C. Reduction Formulas for the Whittaker Function Wκ,μ (x)
For the convenience of the reader, reduction formulas for the Whittaker function are presented in their explicit form in Table A1.
Table A1.
Whittaker function for particular values of and .
Table A1.
Whittaker function for particular values of and .
| 0 | 0 | |
| 0 | ||
| 0 | ||
| 0 | ||
| 0 | ||
| 1 | ||
| 1 | ||
| 1 | ||
| 2 |
References
- Whittaker, E.T. An expression of certain known functions as generalized hypergeometric functions. Bull. Am. Math. Soc. 1903, 10, 125–134. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
- Mainardi, F.; Paris, R.B.; Consiglio, A. Wright functions of the second kind and Whittaker functions. Fract. Calc. Appl. Anal. 2022, 25, 858–875. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
- Olver, F.W.J.; Lozier, D.W.; Boisvert, R.F.; Clark, C.W. NIST Handbook of Mathematical Functions; Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, UK, 2010. [Google Scholar]
- Oldham, K.B.; Myland, J.; Spanier, J. An Atlas of Functions: With Equator, the Atlas Function Calculator; Springer: Berlin/Heidelberg, Germany, 2009. [Google Scholar]
- Buchholz, H. The Confluent Hypergeometric Function; Springer: Berlin/Heidelberg, Germany, 1969. [Google Scholar]
- Erdélyi, A.; Magnus, W.; Oberhettinger, F.; Tricomi, F.G. Higher Transcendental Functions; McGraw-Hill: New York, NY, USA, 1953; Volume 1. [Google Scholar]
- Gradstein, I.S.; Ryzhik, I.M. Table of Integrals, Series, and Products, 8th ed.; Academic Press: Cambridge, MA, USA, 2015. [Google Scholar]
- Magnus, W.; Oberhettinger, F.; Soni, R.P. Formulas and Theorems for the Special Functions of Mathematical Physics; Springer Science & Business Media: Berlin/Heidelberg, Germany, 2013; Volume 52. [Google Scholar]
- Prudnikov, A.P.; Brychkov, Y.A.; Marichev, O.I. Integrals and Series: More Special Functions; CRC Press: Boca Raton, FL, USA, 1986; Volume 3. [Google Scholar]
- Slater, L.J. Confluent Hypergeometric Functions; Cambrigde University Press: Cambrigde, UK, 1960. [Google Scholar]
- Whittaker, E.T.; Watson, G.N. A Course of Modern Analysis, 4th ed.; Cabrigdge University Press: Cambrigde, UK, 1963. [Google Scholar]
- Lagarias, J.C. The Schrödinger operator with morse potential on the right half-line. Commun. Number Theory 2009, 3, 323–361. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
- Laurenzi, B.J. Derivatives of Whittaker functions wκ,1/2 and mκ,1/2 with respect to order κ. Math. Comput. 1973, 27, 129–132. [Google Scholar]
- Omair, M.A.; Tashkandy, Y.A.; Askar, S.; Alzaid, A.A. Family of distributions derived from Whittaker function. Mathematics 2022, 10, 1058. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
- Abad, J.; Sesma, J. Successive derivatives of Whittaker functions with respect to the first parameter. Comput. Phys. Commun. 2003, 156, 13–21. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
- Becker, P.A. Infinite integrals of Whittaker and Bessel functions with respect to their indices. J. Math. Phys. 2009, 50, 123515. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
- Buschman, R.G. Finite sum representations for partial derivatives of special functions with respect to parameters. Math. Comput. 1974, 28, 817–824. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
- Ancarani, L.U.; Gasaneo, G. Derivatives of any order of the hypergeometric function pFq(a1,…, ap; b1,…, bq; z) with respect to the parameters ai and bi. J. Phys. A-Math. Theor. 2010, 43, 085210. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
- Sofotasios, P.C.; Brychkov, Y.A. On derivatives of hypergeometric functions and classical polynomials with respect to parameters. Integr. Transf. Spec. Funct. 2018, 29, 852–865. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
- Apelblat, A.; González-Santander, J.L. The Integral Mittag-Leffler, Whittaker and Wright functions. Mathematics 2021, 9, 3255. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
- Kölbig, K.S. On the integral xν−1(1 − x)−λ(lnx)mdx. J. Comput. Appl. Math. 1987, 18, 369–394. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
- Geddes, K.O.; Glasser, M.L.; Moore, R.A.; Scott, T.C. Evaluation of classes of definite integrals involving elementary functions via differentiation of special functions. Appl. Algebra Eng. Commun. 1990, 1, 149–165. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
- Apelblat, A.; Kravitsky, N. Integral representations of derivatives and integrals with respect to the order of the Bessel functions Jν(t), Iν(t), the Anger function Jν(t) and the integral Bessel function Jiν(t). IMA J. Appl. Math. 1985, 34, 187–210. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
- Ancarani, L.; Gasaneo, G. Derivatives of any order of the confluent hypergeometric function 1F1(a, b, z) with respect to the parameter a or b. J. Math. Phys. 2008, 49, 063508. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
- González-Santander, J.L. Closed-form expressions for derivatives of Bessel functions with respect to the order. J. Math. Anal. Appl. 2018, 466, 1060–1081. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
- Brychkov, Y.A. Higher derivatives of the Bessel functions with respect to the order. Integr. Transf. Spec. Funct. 2016, 27, 566–577. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
- Brychkov, Y.A.; Geddes, K.O. On the derivatives of the Bessel and Struve functions with respect to the order. Integr. Transf. Spec. Funct. 2005, 16, 187–198. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
- Apelblat, A. Bessel and Related Functions: Mathematical Operations with Respect to the Order; De Gruyter: Berlin, Germany, 2020. [Google Scholar]
- Lebedev, N.N. Special Functions and Their Applications; Prentice-Hall Inc.: Hoboken, NJ, USA, 1965. [Google Scholar]
Disclaimer/Publisher’s Note: The statements, opinions and data contained in all publications are solely those of the individual author(s) and contributor(s) and not of MDPI and/or the editor(s). MDPI and/or the editor(s) disclaim responsibility for any injury to people or property resulting from any ideas, methods, instructions or products referred to in the content. |
© 2023 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).