English

"Infinitely Often" Transcendence of Gamma-Function Derivatives

Number Theory 2026-04-22 v4

Abstract

Relatively little is known about the arithmetic properties of Gamma-function derivatives evaluated at arbitrary points qQZ0q\in\mathbb{Q}\setminus\mathbb{Z}_{\leq0}. In recent work, we showed that the sequence {Γ(n)(1)}n1\left\{\Gamma^{\left(n\right)}\left(1\right)\right\}_{n\geq1} contains transcendental elements infinitely often. That result is now generalized to all sequences {Γ(n)(q)}n1\left\{\Gamma^{\left(n\right)}\left(q\right)\right\}_{n\geq1} for q12ZZ0q\in\tfrac{1}{2}\mathbb{Z}\setminus\mathbb{Z}_{\leq0}. Moreover, for all such qq we derive a lower bound, β(N)=max{0,N5/2}/N\beta\left(N\right)=\max\left\{ 0,\sqrt{N}-5/2\right\}/N, for the density of transcendental elements Γ(n)(q)\Gamma^{\left(n\right)}\left(q\right) among n{1,2,,N}n\in\left\{1,2,\ldots,N\right\}, where β(N)N1/20\beta\left(N\right)\asymp N^{-1/2}\rightarrow0 as NN\rightarrow\infty. For qQ12Zq\in\mathbb{Q}\setminus\tfrac{1}{2}\mathbb{Z}, we find the somewhat weaker result that at least one of the sequences {Γ(n)(q)}n1\left\{\Gamma^{\left(n\right)}\left(q\right)\right\}_{n\geq1}, {Γ(n)(1q)}n1\left\{\Gamma^{\left(n\right)}\left(1-q\right)\right\}_{n\geq1} contains infinitely many transcendental elements.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2601.18474,
  title  = {"Infinitely Often" Transcendence of Gamma-Function Derivatives},
  author = {Michael R. Powers},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2601.18474},
  year   = {2026}
}
R2 v1 2026-07-01T09:20:24.689Z