Special functions (Q618996)

Special functions are functions that show up in several contexts. The most classical special functions are the monomials and the exponential functions. On the next level, one finds the hypergeometric functions, which appear naturally in group representations, hypergeometric series and Fourier integrals. The standard hypergeometric functions have power series which satisfy 2 term recursion relations. This leads to the usual expression for the power series coefficients as quotients of rational and factorial-like expressions. In this paper, a ``hierarchy'' of special functions which satisfy higher order recursion relations is developed. They generalize the classical Mathieu and Lamé functions. These classical functions satisfy 3 term recursion relations and the theory developed in this paper produces Lamé-like functions which satisfy recursions of any order. Moreover, some of the properties of these functions are studied.