1. Introduction
The Geometric Theory of Analytic Functions was initially developed for the space
of analytic functions in the disk
where
. The convexity and starlikeness of functions are the first geometric ideas considered in this theory. We say that a function
of the form
is starlike in
if it is univalent in the unit disc
and
is a starlike domain with respect to the origin. By Jack’s Lemma, we obtain that the starlikeness of a function
f in the unit disk is preserved inside this disk, i.e.,
f maps each disk
onto a starlike domain with respect to the origin. It is equivalent to the following analytic condition:
Thus, we can obtain the following analytic definition of starlikeness. A function
,
is starlike in
if and only if
Similar topics are considered in the space of analytic functions in
, i.e., in the space of meromorphic functions.
We can also notice a symmetry between the subjects considered in the space of analytic functions and those in the space of harmonic functions. Clunie and Sheil-Small [
1] transferred the ideas of convexity and starlikeness to the space of harmonic functions. Harmonic functions are famous for their use in the study of minimal surfaces and also play important roles in a variety of problems in applied mathematics (e.g., see Choquet [
2], Dorff [
3], or Lewy [
4]). We say that
is a harmonic function in a domain
if it has continuous second-order partial derivatives and satisfies the Laplace equation
The function
f defined in the domain
is called a meromorphic harmonic function. Let
denote the class of all such functions, with the normalization
The object of this paper is to generalize and investigate starlike functions in the space of meromorphic harmonic functions.
A function that preserves the orientation of a Jordan curve is called sense-preserving or orientation-preserving. It is equivalent to saying that the Jacobian is strictly positive at every point of the domain .
Let
be a harmonic, sense-preserving, and univalent function in
Then, Hengartner and Schober [
5] showed that there exist
and functions
of the form
such that
where and
is analytic and bounded by 1 in
.
Finally, we denote by
the class of functions
of the form
which are sense-preserving and univalent in
It should be noted that meromorphic harmonic functions have been extensively studied by researchers (see [
6,
7,
8,
9,
10,
11]).
A function
is said to be meromorphic harmonic starlike in
if
f maps
onto a curve that is starlike with respect to the origin, i.e., it satisfies the condition (
1). If we define the following meromorphic harmonic derivative
then we can write the condition (
1) as follows:
Researchers have extensively studied the class of starlike and convex functions and their generalizations in the space of analytic functions and the space of harmonic functions. They use various techniques and tools, e.g., subordination, convolution, and linear operators. Also, special functions play an important role in this aspect. The main one is the generalized hypergeometric function
. We transfer these ideas to the space of meromorphic harmonic functions.
The well-known definition of subordination in the space
is closely related to Jack’s Lemma, which does not apply in the space of meromorphic harmonic functions. Therefore, we adapt the definition of weak subordination introduced by Mauir [
12].
We say that a function is weakly subordinate to a function , and we write if
Let
By
, we denote the convolution of
and
defined by
Let
,
be the complex parameters. Using the generalized hypergeometric function
, we define the function
where
and
is the Pochhammer symbol defined, in terms of the Gamma function
, as
Corresponding to the generalized hypergeometric function Dziok and Srivastava [
13] introduced the linear operator
defined in the space
of analytic functions by the convolution
The linear operator
includes other linear operators considered in earlier works, for example, the Hohlov operator, the Carlson–Shaffer operator, Ruscheweyh derivatives, the generalized Bernardi–Libera–Livingston integral operator, and the Srivastava and Owa fractional derivative operator (for details, see [
13]). Harmonic generalizations of the operator
were considered by Al-Kharsani and Al-Khal [
14] (see also [
15,
16]). We define a similar operator in the space
of meromorphic harmonic functions.
Let
and
Due to Dziok and Srivastava [
13], we define the operator
by the convolution formula
In particular, we have
and
The operator
is associated with the Ruscheweyh derivatives (see [
17]), and the operator
is related to the harmonic Sălăgean operator [
18] (see also [
19,
20]). For a function
, we have
Using the above tools, we define generalizations of convex and starlike functions in the space Next, we consider classical extremal problems for the defined classes of functions with correlated coefficients. Some applications of the main results are also discussed.
2. Definitions of Main Subclasses of
In this section, we define the main subclasses of the space
and formulate alternative definitions for these classes of functions. Let us assume
We denote by
the class of functions
for which
or, equivalently,
Also, by
, we denote the class of functions
such that
In particular, the classes
are associated with the Ruscheweyh derivatives
, and the classes
are related to the harmonic Sălăgean operator
. The classes
are related to the Janowski functions [
21] (see also [
10,
22]). Putting
, we obtain the classes
of meromorphic harmonic starlike and convex functions of order
, respectively. Finally,
is the class of meromorphic harmonic starlike functions, and
is the class of meromorphic harmonic convex functions.
Motivated by Ruscheweyh [
23], we define the dual set of the class
by
Now, we show that the main classes of functions can be defined as dual sets.
Proof. Let
Then,
, i.e.,
if and only if
or, equivalently,
Thus,
if and only if
Since
by (
11), we have
Therefore,
if and only if
, i.e.,
□
Proof. Similarly to the proof of Theorem, we obtain that
if and only if
Since
we have
if and only if
for
and
i.e.,
□
Next, we construct the alternative definitions for the main classes of functions with correlated coefficients. Let
be the function of the form
If a function
of the form (
2) satisfies
then we say that it has coefficients correlated with the function
In particular, we obtain functions with varying coefficients, as introduced by Jahangiri and Silverman [
24] (see also [
15,
22]), by setting
for some real number
. Moreover, if we set
then we obtain functions with negative coefficients, as defined by Silverman [
25] (see also [
20,
26]).
We denote by
the class of functions
with coefficients correlated with the function
where
is defined by (
6). Moreover, let us define
If a function
is of the form (
2), then by (
14) and (
15), we have
or, equivalently,
where
Theorem 3. Let be defined by (
5)
andIf a function of the form (
2)
satisfies the following coefficient condition:then . Proof. Let
be of the form (
2). Then by (
7), we have
Moreover, by (
18), we obtain
It is easy to show that the Jacobian of the function
is given by
A function
is sense-preserving and locally univalent if the Jacobian of
f is positive in
. Lewy [
4] proved that the converse theorem holds for harmonic mappings. Since
we have that
is locally univalent and sense-preserving in
To obtain the univalence of
f, we assume that
If we set
, by (
20) and the inequality
we obtain
Thus,
Moreover, for functions
of the form (
10),
and
we have
This means that
and, by Theorem 3, we conclude that
□
The sufficient coefficient bound given in Theorem 3 becomes the definition of the class of functions with correlated coefficients, as stated in the following theorem.
Theorem 4. Let be a function of the form (
2)
. Then, if and only if the condition (
18)
holds true. Proof. By Theorem 3, we need to prove the “only if” part. Let
be of the form (
2) and let
Since
, i.e.,
, and
J is univalent in
, we can define the function
Then,
and
for
, i.e.,
Thus,
Since
we obtain
Thus, for
we have
which, by (
16), gives
We note that the denominator on the left-hand side cannot be zero for
and it is positive for
Thus, it is positive for
. Consequently, by (
22), we obtain
Let
denote the sequence of partial sums associated with the series
It is clear that this is a non-decreasing sequence and bounded by
Thus, the sequence is convergent and
which gives (
18). □
In the same way, we obtain the following theorem.
Theorem 5. A function of the form (
2)
belongs to the class if and only if By Theorems 4 and 5, we have the following corollary.
Corollary 1. If andthen 4. Extreme Points
First, we study the topological and convexity properties of the classes of correlated coefficients. Let us consider thelinear topology on given byuniform convergence on a compact subset of .
We say that aclass is convex if any convex linear combination of two functions from belongs to . Wedenote by the closed convex hull of , i.e., theintersection of all closed convex subsets of that contain .
A function is called an extreme point of if it cannot be represented as a non-degenerate convex linear combination of two functions from . Wedenote by theset of all extreme points of It is clear that
We say that a functional
is
convex on aconvex class
if
Let
. We denote by
the class of functions
f of the form
which are analytic in
. By
, we denote class of functions
that satisfy the condition
From Montel’s theorem, we have the following lemma.
Lemma 1. A class is compact if and only if is closed and locally uniformly bounded.
Lemma 2. The class is compact.
Proof. A class
islocally uniformly bounded if for each
there isa real constant
such that
Let
Then, by (
30), we have
This implies that the class
is locally uniformly bounded. Next, we show that it is a closed set. Let
f be a function of the form (
2), and let
be a sequence of functions
given by
By (
30), we obtain
If
then we obtain that
and
as
. Thus, by (
31), we have
and consequently,
which completes the proof. □
Theorem 9. The class is a compact and convex subclass of .
Proof. Let
and
be functions of the form
Then, we have
Moreover, by Theorem 4, we obtain
Thus, the function
belongs to the class
, and consequently, the class is convex.
Let
be a sequence of the form
where
By Theorem 4, we have
Thus,
and consequently,
By Lemma 2, there exists a subsequence
of the sequence
that converges to the function
In the same way, there exists a subsequence
of the subsequence
that converges to the function
Thus, the subsequence
of the sequence
converges to the function
By Theorem 4, we obtain that
and
as
. Thus, by (
31), we have
and consequently,
Thus, we obtain that the class
is compact, which completes the proof. □
Theorem 10. The extreme points of the class are the functions and given by (
29)
, i.e., Proof. Let
and
be functions of the form (
32). If
then by (
29), we obtain
Thus,
for
and
for
This means that
and consequently,
Analogously, we obtain that the functions
of the form (
29) are the extreme points of the class
Now, let
be not of the form (
29). Then there exists
such that
If
, then for
we have that
, and
Thus,
Analogously, if
, then by setting
with
we obtain
Thus,
which completes the proof. □
Analogously, we prove the next theorem.
Theorem 11. The class is a compact and convex subclass of . Moreover, the functions and of the formare the extreme points of the class