I am trying to understand the behavior of the following function w.r.t $b$:
$$ \mathrm{M}\left(b,k\right) = \int_{0}^{\infty}\mathrm{e}^{-kt}\left(2\mathrm{e}^{t} - 1\right)^{b} \,\mathrm{d}t\quad \mbox{where}\ 0 \leq b \leq \frac{k}{2}\ \mbox{and}\ k\ \mbox{is an}\ even\ \mbox{integer}. $$
One way is to expand the $\left(2\mathrm{e}^{t} - 1\right)^{b}$ term ( when $b$ is an integer ) and then integrate after which I end up with a sum involving alternating binomial coefficients along with other terms and I can't really reason about how that sum behaves w.r.t $b$. Is there an approximation for $\mathrm{M}$ which is a simpler closed form expression of $b$ ?.
The reason I am asking is to eventually figure out ( a reasonable approximation would be fine ) where the minima of the following expression lies in the range $0\leq b\leq \frac{k}{2}$:
$\mathrm{M}\left(\exp\left(\frac{k}{\left(k - b\right)\mathrm{M}}\right) - 1\right)$
where $\mathrm{M}$ is a function of $b$ and $k$ as defined in the beginning.