§19.1 Special Notation
(For other notation see Notation for the Special Functions.)
| nonnegative integers. | |
| real or complex argument (or amplitude). | |
| real or complex modulus. | |
| complementary real or complex modulus,
|
|
| real or complex parameter. | |
| beta function (§5.12). |
All square roots have their principal values. All derivatives are denoted by differentials, not by primes.
The first set of main functions treated in this chapter are Legendre’s complete integrals
of the first, second, and third kinds, respectively, and Legendre’s incomplete integrals
of the first, second, and third kinds, respectively. This
notation follows Byrd and Friedman (1971, 110). We use also the function
, introduced by Jahnke et al. (1966, p. 43). The
functions (19.1.1) and (19.1.2) are used in
Erdélyi et al. (1953b, Chapter 13), except that
and
are denoted
by
and
, respectively, where
.
In Abramowitz and Stegun (1964, Chapter 17) the functions (19.1.1) and
(19.1.2) are denoted, in order, by
,
,
,
,
, and
, where
and
is
the
(not related to
) in (19.1.1) and (19.1.2). Also,
frequently in this reference
is replaced by
and
by
, where
. However, it should be noted that in Chapter 8 of
Abramowitz and Stegun (1964) the notation used for elliptic integrals differs from
Chapter 17 and is consistent with that used in the present chapter and the rest of
the NIST Handbook and DLMF.
The second set of main functions treated in this chapter is
,
, and
are the symmetric (in
,
, and
) integrals of the
first, second, and third kinds; they are complete if
exactly one of
,
, and
is identically 0.
is a multivariate
hypergeometric function that includes all the functions in (19.1.3).

