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Fox-Wright function

Generalisation of the generalised hypergeometric function pFq(z)

Wikipedia contributorsAdapted for Fathomly · View authors
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Source updated August 25, 2026

In mathematics, the Fox-Wright function (also known as Fox-Wright Psi function, not to be confused with Wright Omega function) is a generalisation of the generalised hypergeometric function pFq(z) based on ideas of Charles Fox (1928) and E. Maitland Wright (1935):

{}_{p}\Psi _{q}\left[{\begin{matrix}(a_{1},A_{1})&(a_{2},A_{2})&\ldots &(a_{p},A_{p})\\(b_{1},B_{1})&(b_{2},B_{2})&\ldots &(b_{q},B_{q})\end{matrix}};z\right]=\sum _{n=0}^{\infty }{\frac {\Gamma (a_{1}+A_{1}n)\cdots \Gamma (a_{p}+A_{p}n)}{\Gamma (b_{1}+B_{1}n)\cdots \Gamma (b_{q}+B_{q}n)}}\,{\frac {z^{n}}{n!}}.

Upon changing the normalisation

{}_{p}\Psi _{q}^{*}\left[{\begin{matrix}(a_{1},A_{1})&(a_{2},A_{2})&\ldots &(a_{p},A_{p})\\(b_{1},B_{1})&(b_{2},B_{2})&\ldots &(b_{q},B_{q})\end{matrix}};z\right]={\frac {\Gamma (b_{1})\cdots \Gamma (b_{q})}{\Gamma (a_{1})\cdots \Gamma (a_{p})}}\sum _{n=0}^{\infty }{\frac {\Gamma (a_{1}+A_{1}n)\cdots \Gamma (a_{p}+A_{p}n)}{\Gamma (b_{1}+B_{1}n)\cdots \Gamma (b_{q}+B_{q}n)}}\,{\frac {z^{n}}{n!}}

it becomes pFq(z) for A1...p = B1...q = 1.

The Fox-Wright function is a special case of the Fox H-function (Srivastava & Manocha 1984, p. 50):

{}_{p}\Psi _{q}\left[{\begin{matrix}(a_{1},A_{1})&(a_{2},A_{2})&\ldots &(a_{p},A_{p})\\(b_{1},B_{1})&(b_{2},B_{2})&\ldots &(b_{q},B_{q})\end{matrix}};z\right]=H_{p,q+1}^{1,p}\left[-z\left|{\begin{matrix}(1-a_{1},A_{1})&(1-a_{2},A_{2})&\ldots &(1-a_{p},A_{p})\\(0,1)&(1-b_{1},B_{1})&(1-b_{2},B_{2})&\ldots &(1-b_{q},B_{q})\end{matrix}}\right.\right].

01Wright function

The entire function W_{\lambda ,\mu }(z) is often called the Wright function. It is the special case of {}_{0}\Psi _{1}\left[\ldots \right] of the Fox-Wright function. Its series representation is

W_{\lambda ,\mu }(z)=\sum _{n=0}^{\infty }{\frac {z^{n}}{n!\,\Gamma (\lambda n+\mu )}},\lambda >-1.

This function is used extensively in fractional calculus. Recall that \lim \limits _{\lambda \to 0}W_{\lambda ,\mu }(z)=e^{z}/\Gamma (\mu ). Hence, a non-zero \lambda with zero \mu is the simplest nontrivial extension of the exponential function in such context.

Three properties were stated in Theorem 1 of Wright (1933) and 18.1(30-32) of Erdelyi, Bateman Project, Vol 3 (1955) (p. 212)

{\begin{aligned}\lambda zW_{\lambda ,\mu +\lambda }(z)&=W_{\lambda ,\mu -1}(z)+(1-\mu )W_{\lambda ,\mu }(z)&(a)\\[6pt]{d \over dz}W_{\lambda ,\mu }(z)&=W_{\lambda ,\mu +\lambda }(z)&(b)\\[6pt]\lambda z{d \over dz}W_{\lambda ,\mu }(z)&=W_{\lambda ,\mu -1}(z)+(1-\mu )W_{\lambda ,\mu }(z)&(c)\end{aligned}}

Equation (a) is a recurrence formula. (b) and (c) provide two paths to reduce a derivative. And (c) can be derived from (a) and (b).

A special case of (c) is \lambda =-c\alpha ,\mu =0. Replacing z with -x^{\alpha }, we have

{\begin{array}{lcl}x{d \over dx}W_{-c\alpha ,0}(-x^{\alpha })&=&-{\frac {1}{c}}\left[W_{-c\alpha ,-1}(-x^{\alpha })+W_{-c\alpha ,0}(-x^{\alpha })\right]\end{array}}

A special case of (a) is \lambda =-\alpha ,\mu =1. Replacing z with -z, we have \alpha zW_{-\alpha ,1-\alpha }(-z)=W_{-\alpha ,0}(-z)

Two notations, M_{\alpha }(z) and F_{\alpha }(z), were used extensively in the literatures:

{\begin{aligned}M_{\alpha }(z)&=W_{-\alpha ,1-\alpha }(-z),\\[1ex]\implies F_{\alpha }(z)&=W_{-\alpha ,0}(-z)=\alpha zM_{\alpha }(z).\end{aligned}}

M-Wright function

M_{\alpha }(z) is known as the M-Wright function, entering as a probability density in a relevant class of self-similar stochastic processes, generally referred to as time-fractional diffusion processes.

Its properties were surveyed in Mainardi et al (2010).

Its asymptotic expansion of M_{\alpha }(z) for \alpha >0 is M_{\alpha }\left({\frac {r}{\alpha }}\right)=A(\alpha )\,r^{(\alpha -1/2)/(1-\alpha )}\,e^{-B(\alpha )\,r^{1/(1-\alpha )}},\,\,r\rightarrow \infty , where A(\alpha )={\frac {1}{\sqrt {2\pi (1-\alpha )}}}, B(\alpha )={\frac {1-\alpha }{\alpha }}.

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Sources and credits

This article is adapted from the Wikipedia article “Fox-Wright function”, written by its contributors and licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Fathomly has changed the layout, removed citation markers, navigation and maintenance notices, and adjusted punctuation. This adapted version is shared under the same license. For references, see the original article.

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