Algorithm 707: CONHYP: A Numerical Evaluator of the Confluent Hypergeometric Function for Complex Arguments of Large Magnitudes

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

1-9-1992

Abstract

A numerical evaluator for the confluent hypergeometric function for complex arguments with large magnitudes using a direct summation of Kummer's series is presented. Extended precision subroutines using large arrays to accumulate a single numerator and denominator are ultimately used in a single division to arrive at the final result. The accuracy has been verified through a variety of tests and they show the evaluator to be consistently accurate to 13 significant figures, and on rare occasion accurate to only 9 for magnitudes of the arguments ranging into the thousands in any quadrant in the complex plane. Because the evaluator automatically determines the number of significant figures of machine precision, and because it is written in FORTRAN 77, tests on various computers have shown the evaluator to provide consistently accurate results, making the evaluator very portable. The principal drawback is that, for certain arguments, the evaluator is slow; however, the evaluator remains valuable as a benchmark even in such cases. © 1992, ACM. All rights reserved.

Publication Title

ACM Transactions on Mathematical Software (TOMS)

Link to Full Text

Share

COinS