Derivation of Green-type, transitional and uniform asymptotic expansions from differential equations III. The confluent hypergeometric function U ( a , c , z ) for large | c |

Abstract

The methods introduced by Jorna (1964 a , b ) are applied to Kummer’s equation, and Green-type, transitional and uniform expansions derived for solutions of the type denoted in Slater (1960) by U ( a , c , z ) which are valid for large | c |. The subsidiary function in the uniform expansion is essentially a parabolic cylinder function of order ½ a . The general exponential integral is studied as a special case. Here the uniform expansion involves as subsidiary function the extensively tabulated error integral.