When the elliptic modulus has a singular value, the complete elliptic integrals may be computed in analytic form in terms of gamma functions. Abel (quoted in Whittaker and Watson 1990, p. 525) proved that whenever
(1)
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where , , , , and are integers, is a complete elliptic integral of the first kind, and is the complementary complete elliptic integral of the first kind, then the elliptic modulus is the root of an algebraic equation with integer coefficients.
A elliptic modulus such that
(2)
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is called a singular value of the elliptic integral. The elliptic lambda function gives the value of .
Selberg and Chowla (1967) showed that and are expressible in terms of a finite number of gamma functions. The complete elliptic integrals of the second kind and can be expressed in terms of and with the aid of the elliptic alpha function .
Values of for small integer in terms of gamma functions are summarized below.
(3)
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(4)
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(5)
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(6)
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(7)
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(8)
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(9)
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(10)
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(11)
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(12)
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(13)
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(14)
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(15)
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(16)
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(17)
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(18)
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(19)
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(20)
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where is the gamma function and is an algebraic number (Borwein and Borwein 1987, p. 298).
Borwein and Zucker (1992) give amazing expressions for singular values of complete elliptic integrals in terms of central beta functions
(21)
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Furthermore, they show that is always expressible in terms of these functions for . In such cases, the functions appearing in the expression are of the form where and . The terms in the numerator depend on the sign of the Kronecker symbol . Values for the first few are
(22)
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(23)
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(24)
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(25)
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(26)
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(27)
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(28)
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(29)
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(30)
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(31)
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(32)
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(33)
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(34)
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(35)
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(36)
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(37)
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(38)
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(39)
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(40)
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and is an algebraic number (Borwein and Zucker 1992). Note that is the only value in the above list which cannot be expressed in terms of central beta functions.
Using the elliptic alpha function, the elliptic integrals of the second kind can also be found from
(41)
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(42)
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and by definition,
(43)
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