Monotonicity and concavity properties of the Gaussian hypergeometric functions, with applications (Q6067739)

Many fields of mathematics, such as mathematical physics, differential equations theory, number theory, complex analysis, hyperbolic geometry, statistics, and other disciplines have a long history of using hypergeometric functions of a single variable. For \(a, b\in\mathbb{C}\), and \(c\in\mathbb{C}\setminus\mathbb{Z}_0^{-}\), the Gauss hypergeometric function is defined by \[ {}_2F_1\left(\begin{array}{c}a, b\\ c\end{array}\!\!;x\right)=\sum_{n=0}^\infty \frac{(a)_n (b)_n}{(c)_n}\,\frac{x^n}{n!}, \qquad (|x|<1), \] see, e.g., [\textit{E. D. Rainville}, Special functions. New York: The Macmillan Company (1960; Zbl 0092.06503)]. This hypergeometric function extension includes \((a)_j\) with \(1\leq j\leq p, q\), a case with many applications, see [\textit{L. J. Slater}, Generalized hypergeometric functions. Cambridge: At the University Press (1966; Zbl 0135.28101)], where \(a,b\in\mathbb{C}\), \(c\in\mathbb{C}\setminus \mathbb{Z}_0^-\). Here \((a)_n\) denotes the generalised Pochhammer symbol (also called shifted factorial). The monotonicity of the function \(F(x)=(1-x)^d F(a, b; c; x)\) plays a crucial role in proving inequalities (1.5)--(1.7) in the paper. A goal is to provide a monotonicity theorem for the equation \(F(x)=(1-x)^d F(a, b; c; x)\) for any \(a, b, c\in(0,+\infty)\) and \(d\in \mathbb R\). Theorems 1.1 and 1.2 refer to the general hypergeometric function \(F(a, b; c; x)\) for \(a, b,\) and \(c\) greater than zero. In this work, the authors study the convexity and concavity features of the function \(H(x)\) defined in Equation (1.8) of the paper for each \((a, b)\) with \(a>0, b>0\). Additionally, they investigate the monotonicity of the proportion of \(F(a, b; c; x)\) (with \(a, b, c > 0\)) to \(\log[d/(1-x)]\) (with \(d>1\)) on (0, 1). This result aims to address Question 1.4, which comes from Theorem 1.3. in [\textit{S. L. Qiu} and \textit{M. Vuorinen}, SIAM J. Math. Anal. 30, No. 5, 1057--1075 (1999; Zbl 0931.30011)]. This paper is structured as follows. Key results are outlined in Section 2, with complete proofs provided in Section 3. In Section 4, the authors use the monotonicity of \(F(x)\) and a related lemma gives numerous monotonicity theorems for Takeuchi's complete \(p\)-elliptic integrals. Finally, new upper and lower bounds for the generalized Grötzsch ring function with two parameters are found. In future studies, the approaches given in this paper could be used to produce results for extended hypergeometric series with a single variable and extended Airy special functions.