The offset logarithmic integral or Eulerian logarithmic integral is defined as
As such, the integral representation has the advantage of avoiding the singularity in the domain of integration.
Equivalently,
Special valuesedit
The function li(x) has a single positive zero; it occurs at x ≈ 1.45136 92348 83381 05028 39684 85892 02744 94930... OEIS: A070769; this number is known as the Ramanujan–Soldner constant.
This gives the following more accurate asymptotic behaviour:
As an asymptotic expansion, this series is not convergent: it is a reasonable approximation only if the series is truncated at a finite number of terms, and only large values of x are employed. This expansion follows directly from the asymptotic expansion for the exponential integral.
This implies e.g. that we can bracket li as:
for all .
Number theoretic significanceedit
The logarithmic integral is important in number theory, appearing in estimates of the number of prime numbers less than a given value. For example, the prime number theorem states that:
where denotes the number of primes smaller than or equal to .
For small , but the difference changes sign an infinite number of times as increases, and the first time this happens is somewhere between 1019 and 1.4×10316.
Temme, N. M. (2010), "Exponential, Logarithmic, Sine, and Cosine Integrals", in Olver, Frank W. J.; Lozier, Daniel M.; Boisvert, Ronald F.; Clark, Charles W. (eds.), NIST Handbook of Mathematical Functions, Cambridge University Press, ISBN 978-0-521-19225-5, MR 2723248.