On a Conjecture Concerning the Approximates of Complete Elliptic Integral of the First Kind by Inverse Hyperbolic Tangent

Abstract

Let $\K$ be the complete elliptic integral of the first kind. In this paper, the authors prove that the function $r\mapsto r^{-2}\{[\log(2\K(r)/\pi)]/\log((\arth r)/r)-3/4\}$ is strictly increasing from $(0,1)$ onto $(1/320,1/4)$, so that $[(\arth r)/r]^{3/4+r^2/320}<2\K(r)/\pi<[(\arth r)/r]^{3/4+r^2/4}$ for $r\in(0,1)$, in which all the coefficients of the exponents of the two bounds are best possible, thus proving a conjecture raised by Alzer and Qiu to be true, and giving better bounds of $\K(r)$ than those they conjectured and put in an open problem. Some other analytic properties of the complete elliptic integrals, including other kind of approximates for $\K(r)$, are obtained, too.