I am using Sympy to evaluate some symbolic sums that involve manipulations of the gamma functions but I noticed that in this case it's not evaluating the sum and keeps it unevaluated.
import sympy as sp
a = sp.Symbol('a',real=True)
b = sp.Symbol('b',real=True)
d = sp.Symbol('d',real=True)
c = sp.Symbol('c',integer=True)
z = sp.Symbol('z',complex=True)
t = sp.Symbol('t',complex=True)
sp.simplify(t-sp.summation((sp.exp(-d)*(d**c)/sp.gamma(c+1))/(z-c-a*t),(c,0,sp.oo)))
I then need to lambdify this expression, and unfortunately this becomes impossible to do.
With Matlab symbolic toolbox however I get the following answer:
Matlab
>> a=sym('a')
>> b=sym('b');
>> c=sym('c')
>> d=sym('d');
>> z=sym('z');
>> t=sym('t');
>> symsum((exp(-d)*(d^c)/factorial(c))/(z-c-a*t),c,0,inf)
ans =
(-d)^(z - a*t)*exp(-d)*(gamma(a*t - z) - igamma(a*t - z, -d))
The formula involves lower incomplete gamma functions, as expected. Any idea why of this behaviour? I thought sympy was able to do this summation symbolically.
Running your code with SymPy 1.2 results in
d**(-a*t + z)*exp(-I*pi*a*t - d + I*pi*z)*lowergamma(a*t - z, d*exp_polar(I*pi)) + t
By the way, summation already attempts to evaluate the sum (and succeeds in case of SymPy 1.2), subsequent simplification is cosmetic. (And can sometimes be harmful).
The presence of exp_polar means that SymPy found it necessary to consider the points on the Riemann surface of logarithmic function instead of regular complex numbers. (Related bit of docs). The function lower_gamma is branched and so we must distinguish between "the value at -1, if we arrive to -1 from 1 going clockwise" from "the value at -1, if we arrive to -1 from 1 going counterclockwise". The former is exp_polar(-I*pi), the latter is exp_polar(I*pi).
All this is very interesting but not really helpful when you need concrete evaluation of the expression. We have to unpolarify this expression, and from what Matlab shows, simply replacing exp_polar with exp is a correct way to do so here.
rv = sp.simplify(t-sp.summation((sp.exp(-d)*(d**c)/sp.gamma(c+1))/(z-c-a*t),(c,0,sp.oo)))
rv = rv.subs(sp.exp_polar, sp.exp)
Result: d**(-a*t + z)*exp(-I*pi*a*t - d + I*pi*z)*lowergamma(a*t - z, -d) + t
There is still something to think about here, with complex numbers and so on. Is d positive or negative? What does raising it to the power -a*t+z mean, what branch of multivalued power function do we take? The same issues are present in Matlab output, where -d is raised to a power.
I recommend testing this with floating point input (direct summation of series vs evaluation of the SymPy expression for it), and adding assumptions on the sign of d if possible.