What is known in contemporary mathematics about orders of growth for functions that exceed any degree polynomial, but fall short of exponential? This is a subject for which I've found little literature in the past.
An example: $Ae^{a\sqrt x}$ clearly will outrun any finite degree polynomial, but will be outrun by $Be^{bx}$.
If we replace $x$ with $y^2$ then that example doesn't seem so deep. Are there functions that exceed polynomial growth yet fall short of $Ae^{ax^p}$ for any power $0<p<1$? What classes of functions can we distinguish with different kinds of in-between orders of growth? What can we know about their power series expansions, or behavior in the complex plane? Those are examples of the kinds of questions I have, and would like to find literature on.
Have any definitions or terminology been established concerning this? The right jargon will facilitate searching.
Best Answer
One of the best-known classes is the "quasi-polynomials", which are exponentials of polynomials in logs, e.g. $e^{\log^2(x)+\log x}$, which you might also write as $x^{\log(x)+1}$. As long as the degree of the exponent is greater than $1$, these fit between polynomial and exponential.
One has also the "sub-exponentials," which grow as $e^\phi$ where $\lim\limits_{x\to \infty}\frac{\phi(x)}{x}=0$. The most obvious examples that aren't quasi-polynomial are along the lines of the one you gave.
These don't exhaust the possibilities, though. You may be interested in a considerable volume of discussion over at MO of functions $f$ such that $f(f(x))$ is exponential.
These "half-exponentials" are in between the two classes I've described: a proper sub-exponential has an exponent that dominates all polynomials of logarithms, so its composition with itself has an exponent that dominates all polynomials-and thus isn't exponential. In the other direction, you can see that quasi-polynomials are closed under self-composition. Here's the latest thread, with links to others.
https://mathoverflow.net/questions/45477/closed-form-functions-with-half-exponential-growth