Pochhammer contour

In mathematics, the Pochhammer contour, introduced by Camille Jordan (1887) and Leo Pochhammer (1890), is a contour in the complex plane with two points removed, used for contour integration. If A and B are loops around the two points, both starting at some fixed point P, then the Pochhammer contour is the commutator ABA−1B−1, where the superscript −1 denotes a path taken in the opposite direction. With the two points taken as 0 and 1, the fixed basepoint P being on the real axis between them, an example is the path that starts at P, encircles the point 1 in the counter-clockwise direction and returns to P, then encircles 0 counter-clockwise and returns to P, after that circling 1 and then 0 clockwise, before coming back to P. The class of the contour is an actual commutator when it is considered in the fundamental group with basepoint P of the complement in the complex plane (or Riemann sphere) of the two points looped. When it comes to taking contour integrals, moving basepoint from P to another choice Q makes no difference to the result, since there will be cancellation of integrals from P to Q and back. In mathematics, the Pochhammer contour, introduced by Camille Jordan (1887) and Leo Pochhammer (1890), is a contour in the complex plane with two points removed, used for contour integration. If A and B are loops around the two points, both starting at some fixed point P, then the Pochhammer contour is the commutator ABA−1B−1, where the superscript −1 denotes a path taken in the opposite direction. With the two points taken as 0 and 1, the fixed basepoint P being on the real axis between them, an example is the path that starts at P, encircles the point 1 in the counter-clockwise direction and returns to P, then encircles 0 counter-clockwise and returns to P, after that circling 1 and then 0 clockwise, before coming back to P. The class of the contour is an actual commutator when it is considered in the fundamental group with basepoint P of the complement in the complex plane (or Riemann sphere) of the two points looped. When it comes to taking contour integrals, moving basepoint from P to another choice Q makes no difference to the result, since there will be cancellation of integrals from P to Q and back. Within the doubly punctured plane this curve is homologous to zero but not homotopic to zero. Its winding number about any point is 0 despite the fact that within the doubly punctured plane it cannot be shrunk to a single point. The beta function is given by Euler's integral provided that the real parts of α and β are positive, which may be converted into an integral over the Pochhammer contour C as The contour integral converges for all values of α and β and so gives the analytic continuation of the beta function. A similar method can be applied to Euler's integral for the hypergeometric function to give its analytic continuation.