§16.5 Integral Representations and Integrals
When
and
,
,
where the contour of integration separates the poles of
,
, from those of
.
Suppose first that
is a contour that starts at infinity on a line parallel
to the positive real axis, encircles the nonnegative integers in the negative
sense, and ends at infinity on another line parallel to the positive real axis.
Then the integral converges when
provided that
, or when
provided that
, and provides an integral representation
of the left-hand side with these conditions.
Secondly, suppose that
is a contour from
to
. Then the integral converges when
and
. In the case
the left-hand side of
(16.5.1) is an entire function, and the right-hand side supplies an
integral representation valid when
. In the case
the right-hand side of (16.5.1) supplies the analytic continuation
of the left-hand side from the open unit disk to the sector
;
compare §16.2(iii). Lastly, when
the right-hand side of
(16.5.1) can be regarded as the definition of the (customarily
undefined) left-hand side. In this event, the formal power-series expansion of
the left-hand side (obtained from (16.2.1)) is the asymptotic
expansion of the right-hand side as
in the sector
, where
is an arbitrary small
positive constant.
Next, when
,


In (16.5.2)–(16.5.4) all many-valued functions in the integrands assume their principal values, and all integration paths are straight lines.
(16.5.2) also holds when
, provided that
. In (16.5.3) the restriction
can be removed when
. (16.5.4) also holds when
,
provided that
. Lastly, the restrictions on the
parameters can be eased by replacing the integration paths with loop contours;
see Luke (1969a, §3.6).
Laplace transforms and inverse Laplace transforms of generalized hypergeometric functions are given in Prudnikov et al. (1992a, §3.38) and Prudnikov et al. (1992b, §3.36). For further integral representations and integrals see Apelblat (1983, §16), Erdélyi et al. (1953a, §4.6), Erdélyi et al. (1954a, §§6.9 and 7.5), Luke (1969a, §3.6), and Prudnikov et al. (1990, §§2.22, 4.2.4, and 4.3.1).

