Skip to main content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Official websites use .gov
A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.

Secure .gov websites use HTTPS
A lock ( ) or https:// means you’ve safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.

On a generalization of the generating function for Gegenbauer polynomials

Published

Author(s)

Howard S. Cohl

Abstract

We derive a Gegenbauer polynomial expansion for complex powers of the distance between two points in $d$-dimensional Euclidean space. The argument of the Gegenbauer polynomial in the expansion is given by the cosine of the separation angle between the two points as measured from the origin. The order of the Gegenbauer polynomial is given by $d/2-1$, which is ideal for utilization of the addition theorem for hyperspherical harmonics. The coefficients of the expansion are given in terms of an associated Legendre function of the second kind with argument $(r^2+{r^\prime}^2)/(2rr^\prime)>1$, where $r,r^\prime$ represent the Euclidean norm of the vectors representing the distances to the two points as measured from the origin. We extend this result by proving a generalization of the generating function for Gegenbauer polynomials.
Citation
Integral Transforms and Special Functions

Keywords

Euclidean space, Polyharmonic equation, Fundamental solution, Gegenbauer polynomials, associated Legendre functions

Citation

Cohl, H. (2013), On a generalization of the generating function for Gegenbauer polynomials, Integral Transforms and Special Functions, [online], https://doi.org/10.1080/10652469.2012.761613 (Accessed March 28, 2024)
Created January 28, 2013, Updated November 10, 2018