January 29, 2010 EXPONENTIAL POLYNOMIALS, STIRLING NUMBERS, AND EVALUATION OF SOME GAMMA INTEGRALS Khristo N. Boyadzhiev Department of Mathematics, Ohio Northern University Ada, Ohio 45810, USA
[email protected] Abstract. This article is a short elementary review of the exponential polynomials (also called single-variable Bell polynomials) from the point of view of Analysis. Some new properties are included and several Analysis-related applications are mentioned. At the end of the paper one application is described in details - certain Fourier integrals involving and are evaluated in terms of Stirling numbers. Mathematics Subject Classification 11B68, 11C08, 11M35, 33B99. Keywords Exponential polynomial, Bell polynomial, Bell number, Dobinski formula, Stirling number, Mellin derivative, Gamma function. 1. Introduction. We review the exponential polynomials and present a list of properties for easy reference. Exponential polynomials in Analysis appear, for instance, in the rule for computing derivatives like and the related Mellin derivatives . Namely, we have 1 (1.1) or, after the substitution , . (1.2) We also include in this review two properties relating exponential polynomials to Bernoulli numbers, . One is the semi-orthogonality , (1.3) where the right hand side is zero if is odd. The other property is (2.10). At the end we give one application. Using exponential polynomials we evaluate the integrals , (1.4) and (1.5) for in terms of Stirling numbers. 2. Exponential polynomials The evaluation of the series , (2.1) has a long and interesting history. Clearly, , with the agreement that . Several reference books (for instance, [31]) provide the following numbers. 2 As noted by H. Gould in [19, p.