Digital Library of Mathematical Functions
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13 Confluent Hypergeometric FunctionsWhittaker Functions

§13.22 Zeros

From (13.14.2) and (13.14.3) \mathop{M_{{\kappa,\mu}}\/}\nolimits\!\left(z\right) has the same zeros as \mathop{M\/}\nolimits\!\left(\tfrac{1}{2}+\mu-\kappa,1+2\mu,z\right) and \mathop{W_{{\kappa,\mu}}\/}\nolimits\!\left(z\right) has the same zeros as \mathop{U\/}\nolimits\!\left(\tfrac{1}{2}+\mu-\kappa,1+2\mu,z\right), hence the results given in §13.9 can be adopted.

Asymptotic approximations to the zeros when the parameters \kappa and/or \mu are large can be found by reversion of the uniform approximations provided in §§13.20 and 13.21. For example, if \mu(\geq 0) is fixed and \kappa(>0) is large, then the rth positive zero \phi_{r} of \mathop{M_{{\kappa,\mu}}\/}\nolimits\!\left(z\right) is given by

where j_{{2\mu,r}} is the rth positive zero of the Bessel function \mathop{J_{{2\mu}}\/}\nolimits\!\left(x\right)10.21(i)). (13.22.1) is a weaker version of (13.9.8).