# 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.

New in version 0.18.0.

Parameters
zarray-like

Values in the complex plain at which to compute loggamma

outndarray, optional

Output array for computed values of loggamma

Returns
loggammandarray

Values of loggamma at z.

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.