1.II.14B
Part II, 2007
The function is defined by
where is a constant (which is not an integer). The path of integration, , is the Pochhammer contour, defined as follows. It starts at a point on the axis between 0 and 1 , then it circles the points 1 and 0 in the negative sense, then it circles the points 1 and 0 in the positive sense, returning to . At the start of the path, and the integrand is defined at other points on by analytic continuation along .
(i) For what values of is analytic? Give brief reasons for your answer.
(ii) Show that, in the case and ,
where is the Beta function.
(iii) Deduce that the only singularities of are simple poles. Explain carefully what happens if is a positive integer.