Confluent forms of Heun’s differential equation (31.2.1) arise when
two or more of the regular singularities merge to form an irregular
singularity. This is analogous to the derivation of the confluent
hypergeometric equation from the hypergeometric equation in §13.2(i).
There are four standard forms, as follows:
This has regular singularities at and , and an irregular singularity
of rank 1 at .
Mathieu functions (Chapter 28), spheroidal wave functions
(Chapter 30), and Coulomb spheroidal functions (§30.12) are
special cases of solutions of the confluent Heun equation.
This has one singularity, an irregular singularity of rank at .
For properties of the solutions of (31.12.1)–(31.12.4),
including connection formulas, see
Bühring (1994), Ronveaux (1995, Parts B,C,D,E),
Wolf (1998), Lay and Slavyanov (1998), and Slavyanov and Lay (2000).