1. Introduction and Preliminaries
The
is the generalized hypergeometric series defined by (see, e.g., [
1], Section 1.5):
being a natural generalization of the Gaussian hypergeometric series
, where
denotes the Pochhammer symbol (for
) defined by:
where
is the familiar Gamma function (see, e.g., [
1], Section 1.1) and it is assumed that
, an empty product as 1, and that the variable
the numerator parameters
and the denominator parameters
take on complex values, provided that no zeros appear in the denominator of (
1), that is, that:
Here and elsewhere, let
,
, and
be, respectively, the sets of integers, real numbers, and complex numbers. Further,
be the sets of numbers in
less than or equal to
, less than
, greater than or equal to
, and greater than
, respectively, for some
, where
is either
or
.
Furthermore, in the following, an empty sum and an empty product are assumed to be, respectively, 0 and 1.
We recall certain identities and theorems:
The generalized binomial theorem (see, e.g., [
2], p. 44, Equation (8)) is given as:
The classical Gauss’s summation theorem is recalled (see [
3]; see, e.g., [
2], p. 30, Equation (7)):
Setting
in (
4) provides the Chu–Vandermonde summation theorem (see, e.g., [
4], p. 69):
An extension of Gauss’s summation Theorem (
4) is recalled (see, e.g., [
5], p. 534, Entry 7.4.4–10; see also [
6], Equation (8)):
Setting either
or
in (
6) is found to be equivalent to (
4).
The following identities are derivable from (
2) (see, e.g., [
1], p. 5):
By mainly reducing suitable parameters involving
to construct certain summation formulas for
, Choi et al. [
7] introduced the following sequence
(for details, see [
7], Equations (28) and (33)):
and,
Using (
8) and (
11), we may obtain:
One defines the generalized harmonic numbers
by:
where
are the familiar harmonic numbers.
The Psi (or digamma) function
is defined by (see, e.g., [
1], Section 1.3):
where log is assumed to be taken as the principal branch. This Psi function has a number of useful identities, for example,
Among a number of transformation formulas for
and
(see, e.g., [
5,
8]), for our purpose, we begin by recalling Gauss’s quadratic transformation formula for
(see [
3], p. 225, Equation (100); see also [
9], p. 92, Equation (
1); [
10], p. 50):
By making a main use of (
6), Rakha et al. [
6] (p. 173, Equation (
9)) established the following quadratic transformation formula between
and
:
where:
is assumed to be taken one of its two values.
Remark 1. In [
6], the
A and restrictions are not specified.
Kummer [
11] (p. 78, Equation (52)) presented the following quadratic transformation formula (see also [
4], p. 65, Theorem 24): Let
;
. Then:
By primarily using (
6), Rakha et al. [
12] (p. 208, Equation (3)) extended (
20) in the following quadratic transformation formulas between
and
:
where:
is assumed to be taken one of its two values.
As stated in the abstract, the transformation formulas for the generalized hypergeometric series
have theoretical and practical significance. The primary goal of this article is to develop a number of transformation formulae for
, with special emphasis on (
17), (
18), (
20), and (
21), by making beneficial use of the sequence in (
10) and other techniques widely utilized in dealing with
theory.
2. Extensions of the Quadratic Transformation Formulas
This section provides several generalizations of the quadratic transformation formulas (
18) as well as (
17).
Theorem 1. Let ; ; , ;
. Then: Proof. Let
be the left member of (
23). Using (
1), we have:
which, upon using the following duplication formula:
Employing (
3) in (
25) gives:
which, upon using the following identity:
yields:
Recall the following double series manipulation:
being a function, provided that the involved double series is assumed to be absolutely convergent.
Using (
28) in (
27) provides:
which, upon using (
8) and (
26), offers:
Using (
10) in (
29), we obtain:
which, upon setting
in the third summation and dropping the prime on
r, with the aid of (
26), leads to:
or, equivalently,
Employing (
4) or (
5) in
in (
30) provides:
Using (
11) in the inner summation in (
31), with the aid of (
8), we may get:
which, in virtue of (
1), leads to the right member of (
23). □
Remark 2. The right member of (
23) may be expressed in terms of the double hypergeometric function of the Srivastava–Daoust (see, e.g., [
13]; [
14], p. 454, Equation (4.1); [
15], pp. 199–200, Equation (2.1)).
Theorem 2. Let ; ; , ; . Then, Proof. The proof would run in parallel with that of Theorem 1. The details are omitted. □
The following theorem provides a general quadratic transformation formula for a
, which includes (
23) and (
32) as particular cases.
Theorem 3. Let ; ; , ; . Then, Proof. As in the proof of Theorems 1 and 2, by induction on
r, we may justify (
33). Thus, the involved specifics are omitted. □
Theorems 1 and 2 can be rewritten, respectively, as in Theorems 4 and 5.
Theorem 4. Let ; ; , ; , . Then, Proof. Let
be the right member of (
23). We have:
Using (
8) in (
36), we obtain:
which gives:
Setting
in the inner sum in (
37) and dropping the prime on
s, we find:
Employing (
26) in (
38), we get:
which, in light of (
1), leads to the right member of (
35). □
Remark 3. The formulas in Theorems 1 and 4 are found to hold true for
. The particular case of (
35) when
reduces to yield Gauss’s quadratic transformation formula for
(see (
17)).
Theorem 5. Let ; ; , ; . Then, Proof. The proof would proceed in the same manner as Theorem 4. The specifics have been avoided. □
By comparing (
18) and the resultant identity, which may be derived from setting
,
in (
35), we obtain a transformation formula asserted in the following theorem.
Theorem 6. Let ; , . Then, where A with its assumption is the same as in (19). 3. Extensions of the Quadratic Transformation Formulas
This section establishes several generalizations the quadratic transformation formulas (
20) and (
21).
Theorem 7. Let ; , , ; . Then, Proof. Let
be the left member of (
41). We have:
which, upon using (
3) and (
24), gives:
Recall the following double series manipulation:
being a function, provided that the involved double series is assumed to be absolutely convergent.
Employing (
43) in (
42), with the aid of (
8), we obtain:
which, upon using (
24) and (
9), yields:
Using (
10) in (
44), we find:
which, upon setting
and dropping the prime on
r, yields:
Now, proceeding the similar manner as in the proof of Theorem 1, we may get the identity (
41). The remaining specifics are omitted. □
Theorem 8. Let ; , ,
; . Then, Proof. The proof would continue in the same fashion as that of Theorem 7, but without the details. □
Theorem 9. Let ; , , ; . Then, Here, is the same as in (34), and: Proof. As with the proofs of Theorems 7 and 8, we may justify, by induction on
r, (
47). As a result, the details are eliminated. □
As in Theorem 4, Theorem 7 can be rewritten in the following theorem.
Theorem 10. Let , , ; . Then, Remark 4. The case
of (
48) is found to yield Kummer’s quadratic transformation formula (
20). □
As in Theorem 5, Theorem 8 can be rewritten in the following theorem.
Theorem 11. Let ; , ,
; . Then, By matching the right members of (
21) and the case
of (
48), we may obtain a transformation formula between
and
asserted in the following theorem.
Theorem 12. Let , and . Then, where B with its assumption is the same as in (22). 4. Remarks, Further Formulas, and Posing Problems
In this article, by making a convenient use of the
in (
10), we provided a number of transformation formulas among
, which include some known formulae as particular cases.
For the terminating Clausen hypergeometric series
in Theorems 1–3, and 7–9, the summation theorems of Dixon, Saalschütz, Watson, Whipple, and other summation theorems for
(see, e.g., [
5]) cannot be applied.
We may also establish a number of formulas for
by applying calculus to those identities in the previous sections. For example, differentiating both sides of (
23) with respect to
d, and using (
16), we may obtain an identity in Theorem 13.
Theorem 13. Let ; ; , ; , . Then, Setting in Theorem 13 may provide a transformation formula in the following corollary.
Corollary 1. Let ; , ; ,
. Then, The following problems are posed:
In this study, only equalities associated with the hypergeometric function and generalized hypergeometric functions were explored. In fact, inequalities involving hypergeometric and related functions have also been investigated and appeared in the literature. For example, in [
16], an intriguing inequality for the hypergeometric function, which is related to cost-effective numerical density estimation of the hyper-gamma probability distribution was shown (see also the references cited therein). Further it is intriguing to introduce that, in [
17], using the features of superquadratic functions, various interesting improvements and popularizations on time scales of the Hardy-type inequalities and their converses were presented.