1. Introduction and Motivation
Recently, Zhou [
1] proposed the following problem. For
, let
Prove
and, for
,
We find that this problem can be resolved by the generating function approach in conjunction with Dougall’s bilateral
series identity. Define the generating function
We can manipulate it by exchange of the summation order
The next step is crucial by rewriting the summand
Then, we can express
as a bilateral series
Recall that, for an indeterminate
and
, the shifted factorial is defined by the
-function quotient
For the sake of brevity, the multiparameter
-function will be shortened as
For the four complex numbers
subject to condition
, Dougall ([
2]) discovered the following formula for the bilateral series:
Therefore,
can further be reformulated and evaluated as follows:
By making use of the reciprocal property (cf. Rainville ([
3], §17))
we find the simplified generating function
Observing further that
we can express the above generating function as
Recall Glaisher’s numbers (cf.
A002114 in [
4]) with the initial terms
that have the following exponential generating function
we find from (
4) the following explicit formula:
The values of the first few series
are highlighted below as examples:
In view of the power series expansion
rewriting further (
4) by
and extracting the coefficient of
across the above equation, we find the following homogeneous recurrence relation
This is simpler than Zhou’s recursion (
2), since the latter contains an extra constant term. In order to derive Zhou’s equation, we need the triple angle identity
Multiplying (
4) by
, we obtain another functional equation
Finally, Zhou’s Equation (
2) follows by extracting the coefficient of
across.
Let
p and
q be two natural numbers such that
. The above solution of Zhou’s problems motivates the authors to investigate further the following four classes of generalized series:
Recall the Hurwitz zeta function and its alternating form (cf. ([
5], §25.11))
which play an important role in mathematics and have been investigated extensively. The afore-defined four functions can be considered as bilateral generalizations of
and
. They will be computed, in closed form, in the remaining four separate sections, with their values being multiples of integer powers of
either by rational numbers or by algebraic numbers. These results can be considered as counterparts of two well-known zeta function formulae discovered by Euler:
where
and
are Bernoulli and Euler numbers with the following trigonometric generating functions:
The strategy for realizing this objective consists of the generating function method and bilateral hypergeoemtric series summation formulae (see [
6] and ([
7], Chapter 6) for notations), as sketched in presenting our solution to Zhou’s problem. In addition to the identity (
3), we shall also utilize another formula of Dougall ([
2]) for well poised
-series:
provided that
and
are complex numbers such that the bilateral series is well-defined. The original proofs due to Dougall for both
and
are standard, which consist of computing the contour integral of certain complex functions through the Cauchy residue theorem (see also Slater ([
7], §6.1), and ([
8], §5.3)). There are also proofs through transformation from bilateral series to unilateral series, which can be found in Chu [
9,
10].
In order to ensure the accuracy, we have verified numerically, throughout the paper, all the infinite series evaluations by appropriately devised Mathematica commands.
4. Evaluation of -Series
The preceding approach to determine the generation functions for the series
and
does not work directly for
. We have to rewrite first the bilateral series
as two unilateral ones by making the replacement
for the terms with negative summation index
k:
Then, we can deal with the generating function
By further rewriting the summand
we can express the generation function
in terms of the
-series
After some simplifications, we find the following trigonometric expression:
Theorem 3. The generating function fordefined in (8)
is given by When
and
, this gives rise to the generating function (
4) illustrated in the introduction for the series proposed by Zhou [
1]. Further examples are recorded in the next four subsections.
4.1.
In this case, the explicit generating function is given by
By making use of (
11), we can expand the trigonometric function into power series
This yields the following explicit formula:
The values of the first five series are displayed as follows:
4.2.
The corresponding generating function reads as
Then, we derive the following explicit formula:
together with the evaluations of the first five series:
The same values were also obtained previously by Elkies [
11].
4.3.
The corresponding generating function is given by
where
Extracting the first five coefficients from
leads us to the following formulae:
4.4.
The corresponding generating function reads as
where
By extracting the first five coefficients from the above generating function, we find the following infinite series evaluations:
5. Evaluation of -Series
Analogously, by writing first the bilateral series
as two unilateral ones
we can proceed with the generating function
By reformulating the summand
we can express
in terms of bilateral series
To evaluate the above
-series, letting
and
in (
10) yields
Then, the generating function can explicitly be calculated as
Therefore, we obtain the following trigonometric expression.
Theorem 4. The generating function fordefined in (9)
is given by Particular cases of this theorem are presented in the following examples.
5.1.
In this case, the generating function reads as
Recalling (
11), we can expand the trigonometric function into power series
From this, we obtain the following analytical formula:
The values of the first five infinite series are given as follows:
5.2.
In this case, we obtain the following generating function:
By employing the power series expansion
we derive the following analytical formula:
Hence, the closed form evaluations for the first five series follow immediately:
5.3.
In this case, the generating function is given by
Noting that
we find the following explicit formula
as well as the evaluations of the first five series:
5.4.
The corresponding explicit generating function reads as
where
Then, the first five coefficients of
give rise to the following formulae:
5.5.
The corresponding generating function reads as
where
Extracting the initial five coefficients from
yields the following infinite series evaluations:
Concluding comments For the four series defined in (
6)–(
9), their generating functions and evaluations are determined under the conditions “
and
”. However, all the theorems are still valid if these conditions are released by “
with
p and
q being non-proportional:
”. For instance, Theorem 1 can be restated as follows: Let
subject to
. Then, the following generating function holds
By expanding the above function into power series, it is possible to evaluate theoretically the corresponding infinite series. However, the resulting expressions are too involved to be practically presented.
In addition, the identities presented in this paper suggest that one may further examine, in general, the following bilateral Hurwitz zeta function and its alternating counterpart:
Then, any closed formula of the above bilateral series will result in a reciprocal identity about or . The interested reader is enthusiastically encouraged to make exploration.