Closed-form formulas, determinantal expressions, recursive relations, power series, and special values of several functions used in Clark--Ismail's two conjectures

Abstract

In the paper, by virtue of the famous formula of Fa\`a di Bruno, with the aid of several identities of partial Bell polynomials, by means of a formula for derivatives of the ratio of two differentiable functions, and with availability of other techniques, the authors establish closed-form formulas in terms of the Bernoulli numbers and the second kind Stirling numbers, present determinantal expressions, derive recursive relations, obtain power series, and compute special values of the function $\frac{v^j}{1-\operatorname{e}^{-v}}$, its derivatives, and related ones used in Clark--Ismail's two conjectures. By these results, the authors also discover a formula for the determinant of a Hessenberg matrix and derive logarithmic convexity of a sequence related to the function and its derivatives.