Binet's factorial series and extensions to Laplace transforms

Abstract

We investigate a generalization of Binet's factorial series in the parameter $\alpha$ \[ \mu\left( z\right) =\sum_{m=1}^{\infty}\frac{b_{m}\left( \alpha\right) }{\prod_{k=0}^{m-1}(z+\alpha+k)}% \] due to Gilbert, for the Binet function \[ \mu\left( z\right) =\log\Gamma\left( z\right) -\left( z-\frac{1} {2}\right) \log z+z-\frac{1}{2}\log\left( 2\pi\right) \] After a review of the Binet function $\mu\left( z\right) $ and Gilbert's investigations of $\mu\left( z\right) $, several properties of the Binet polynomials $b_{m}\left( \alpha\right) $ are presented. We compare Gilbert's generalized factorial series with Stirling's asymptotic expansion and demonstrate by a numerical example that, with a same number of terms evaluated, the Gilbert generalized factorial series with an optimized value of $\alpha$ can beat the best possible accuracy of Stirling's expansion. Finally, we extend Binet's method to factorial series of Laplace transforms.