A characterization of completely alternating functions

Abstract

In this article, we characterize completely alternating functions on an abelian semigroup $S$ in terms of completely monotone functions on the product semigroup $S\times \mathbb Z_+$. We also discuss completely alternating sequences induced by a class of rational functions and obtain a set of sufficient conditions (in terms of it's zeros and poles) to determine them. As an application, we show a complete characterization of several classes of completely monotone functions on $\mathbb Z_+^2$ induced by rational functions in two variables. We also derive a set of necessary conditions for the complete monotonicity of the sequence $\{\prod_{i=1}^{k}\frac{(n+a_i)}{(n+b_i)}\}_{n \in \mathbb Z_+}, a_i, b_i \in (0,\infty)$