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# scipy.special.loggamma

scipy.special.loggamma(z, out=None) = <ufunc 'loggamma'>

  Principal branch of the logarithm of the gamma function.

  Defined to be \(\log(\Gamma(x))\) for \(x > 0\) and extended to the complex plane by analytic continuation. The function has a single branch cut on the negative real axis.

  Added in version 0.18.0.

  Parameters:
    zarray_like

      Values in the complex plane at which to compute `loggamma`

    outndarray, optional

      Output array for computed values of `loggamma`

  Returns:
    loggammascalar or ndarray

      Values of `loggamma` at z.

  See also

  `gammaln`

    logarithm of the absolute value of the gamma function

  `gammasgn`

    sign of the gamma function

  Notes

  It is not generally true that \(\log\Gamma(z) = \log(\Gamma(z))\), though the real parts of the functions do agree. The benefit of not defining `loggamma` as \(\log(\Gamma(z))\) is that the latter function has a complicated branch cut structure whereas `loggamma` is analytic except for on the negative real axis.

  The identities

  \[\begin{split}\exp(\log\Gamma(z)) &= \Gamma(z) \\ \log\Gamma(z + 1) &= \log(z) + \log\Gamma(z)\end{split}\]

  make `loggamma` useful for working in complex logspace.

  On the real line `loggamma` is related to `gammaln` via `exp(loggamma(x + 0j)) = gammasgn(x)*exp(gammaln(x))`, up to rounding error.

  The implementation here is based on [hare1997].

  References

  [hare1997]

  D.E.G. Hare, Computing the Principal Branch of log-Gamma, Journal of Algorithms, Volume 25, Issue 2, November 1997, pages 221-236.