Extended Hurwitz results for hypergeometric functions arising in spectral theory (Q596234)

The classical Hurwitz Theorem for Bessel functions specifies the number of zeros of the Bessel function \(J_{-\nu}(z)\), considered as a function of the complex variable \(z\), when the order \(-\nu\) is negative. According to this Theorem, \(J_{-\nu}(c)\;(\nu>0,c>0)\) has no zeros for \(2N<\nu<2N+1\) with integer \(N\). In this paper the authors obtain corresponding results for hypergeometric and confluent hypergeometric functions. It is worth noting that their results follow from the fact that certain hypergeometric and confluent hypergeometric functions are positive. Extensions are obtained where the power series are terminated after \(2N+1\) terms and larger zero-free intervals \((2N, V)\) are found. The connection of these results with spectral theory of ordinary differential equations is also mentioned.