Apéry's constant

Binary 1.0011001110111010
Decimal 1.2020569031595942854…
Hexadecimal 1.33BA004F00621383
Continued fraction
Note that this continued fraction is infinite, but it is not known whether this continued fraction is periodic or not.

In mathematics, at the intersection of number theory and special functions, Apéry's constant is defined as the number

where ζ is the Riemann zeta function. It has an approximate value of[1]

ζ(3) = 1.202056903159594285399738161511449990764986292 (sequence A002117 in the OEIS).

This constant arises naturally in a number of physical problems, including in the second- and third-order terms of the electron's gyromagnetic ratio using quantum electrodynamics. It also arises in the analysis of random minimum spanning trees[2] and in conjunction with the gamma function when solving certain integrals involving exponential functions in a quotient which appear occasionally in physics, for instance when evaluating the two-dimensional case of the Debye model and the Stefan–Boltzmann law.

Irrational number

ζ(3) was named Apéry's constant for the French mathematician Roger Apéry, who proved in 1978 that it is irrational.[3] This result is known as Apéry's theorem. The original proof is complex and hard to grasp,[4] and simpler proofs were found later.[5][6]

Beuker's simplified irrationality proof involves approximating the integrand of the known triple integral for ,

by the Legendre polynomials. In particular, van der Poorten's article chronicles this approach by noting that

where , are the Legendre polynomials, and the subsequences are integers or almost integers.

It is still not known whether Apéry's constant is transcendental.

Series representations

Classical

In 1772, Leonhard Euler gave the series representation:[7]

which was subsequently rediscovered several times.[8]

Other classical series representations include:

Fast convergence

Since the 19th century, a number of mathematicians have found convergence acceleration series for calculating decimal places of ζ(3). Since the 1990s, this search has focused on computationally efficient series with fast convergence rates (see section "Known digits").

The following series representation was found by Hjortnaes in 1953,[9] then rediscovered and widely advertised by Apéry in 1979:[3]

The following series representation, found by Amdeberhan in 1996,[10] gives (asymptotically) 1.43 new correct decimal places per term:

The following series representation, found by Amdeberhan and Zeilberger in 1997,[11] gives (asymptotically) 3.01 new correct decimal places per term:

The following series representation, found by Sebastian Wedeniwski in 1998,[12] gives (asymptotically) 5.04 new correct decimal places per term:

where

It was used by Wedeniwski to calculate Apéry's constant with several million correct decimal places.[13]

The following series representation, found by Mohamud Mohammed in 2005,[14] gives (asymptotically) 3.92 new correct decimal places per term:

where

Digit by digit

In 1998, Broadhurst[15] gave a series representation that allows arbitrary binary digits to be computed, and thus, for the constant to be obtained in nearly linear time, and logarithmic space.

Others

The following series representation was found by Ramanujan:[16]

The following series representation was found by Simon Plouffe in 1998:[17]

Srivastava[18] collected many series that converge to Apéry's constant.

Integral representations

There are numerous integral representations for Apéry's constant. Some of them are simple, others are more complicated.

Simple formulas

For example, this one follows from the summation representation for Apéry's constant:

.

The next two follow directly from the well-known integral formulas for the Riemann zeta function:

and

.

This one follows from a Taylor expansion of χ3(eix) about x = ±π/2, where χν(z) is the Legendre chi function:

Note the similarity to

where G is Catalan's constant.

More complicated formulas

For example, one formula was found by Johan Jensen:[19]

,

another by F. Beukers:[5]

,

and yet another by Iaroslav Blagouchine:[20]

.

Evgrafov et al.'s connection to the derivatives of the gamma function

is also very useful for the derivation of various integral representations via the known integral formulas for the gamma and polygamma-functions.[21]

Known digits

The number of known digits of Apéry's constant ζ(3) has increased dramatically during the last decades. This is due both to the increasing performance of computers and to algorithmic improvements.

Number of known decimal digits of Apéry's constant ζ(3)
DateDecimal digitsComputation performed by
173516Leonhard Euler
unknown16Adrien-Marie Legendre
188732Thomas Joannes Stieltjes
1996520000Greg J. Fee & Simon Plouffe
19971000000Bruno Haible & Thomas Papanikolaou
May 199710536006Patrick Demichel
February 199814000074Sebastian Wedeniwski
March 199832000213Sebastian Wedeniwski
July 199864000091Sebastian Wedeniwski
December 1998128000026Sebastian Wedeniwski[1]
September 2001200001000Shigeru Kondo & Xavier Gourdon
February 2002600001000Shigeru Kondo & Xavier Gourdon
February 20031000000000Patrick Demichel & Xavier Gourdon[22]
April 200610000000000Shigeru Kondo & Steve Pagliarulo
January 200915510000000Alexander J. Yee & Raymond Chan[23]
March 200931026000000Alexander J. Yee & Raymond Chan[23]
September 2010100000001000Alexander J. Yee[24]
September 2013200000001000Robert J. Setti[24]
August 2015250000000000Ron Watkins[24]
November 2015400000000000Dipanjan Nag[25]

Reciprocal

The reciprocal of ζ(3) is the probability that any three positive integers, chosen at random, will be relatively prime (in the sense that as N goes to infinity, the probability that three positive integers less than N chosen uniformly at random will be relatively prime approaches this value).[26]

Extension to ζ(2n + 1)

Many people have tried to extend Apéry's proof that ζ(3) is irrational to other odd zeta values. In 2000, Tanguy Rivoal showed that infinitely many of the numbers ζ(2n + 1) must be irrational.[27] In 2001, Wadim Zudilin proved that at least one of the numbers ζ(5), ζ(7), ζ(9), and ζ(11) must be irrational.[28]

See also

Notes

References

  • Amdeberhan, Tewodros (1996), "Faster and faster convergent series for ", El. J. Combinat., 3 (1) .
  • Amdeberhan, Tewodros; Zeilberger, Doron (1997), "Hypergeometric Series Acceleration Via the WZ method", El. J. Combinat., 4 (2) .
  • Apéry, Roger (1979), "Irrationalité de et ", Astérisque, 61: 11–13 .
  • Berndt, Bruce C. (1989), Ramanujan's notebooks, Part II, Springer .
  • Beukers, F. (1979), "A Note on the Irrationality of and ", Bull. London Math. Soc., 11: 268–272, doi:10.1112/blms/11.3.268 .
  • Blagouchine, Iaroslav V. (2014), "Rediscovery of Malmsten's integrals, their evaluation by contour integration methods and some related results", The Ramanujan Journal, 35 (1): 21–110, doi:10.1007/s11139-013-9528-5 .
  • Broadhurst, D.J. (1998), Polylogarithmic ladders, hypergeometric series and the ten millionth digits of and , arXiv:math.CA/9803067 .
  • Euler, Leonhard (1773), "Exercitationes analyticae" (PDF), Novi Commentarii academiae scientiarum Petropolitanae (in Latin), 17: 173–204, retrieved 2008-05-18 .
  • Evgrafov, M. A.; Bezhanov, K. A.; Sidorov, Y. V.; Fedoriuk, M. V.; Shabunin, M. I. (1969), A Collection of Problems in the Theory of Analytic Functions [in Russian], Moscow: Nauka .
  • Frieze, A. M. (1985), "On the value of a random minimum spanning tree problem", Discrete Applied Mathematics, 10 (1): 47–56, doi:10.1016/0166-218X(85)90058-7, MR 0770868 .
  • Gourdon, Xavier; Sebah, Pascal (2003), The Apéry's constant: .
  • Hjortnaes, M. M. (August 1953), Overføring av rekken til et bestemt integral, in Proc. 12th Scandinavian Mathematical Congress, Lund, Sweden: Scandinavian Mathematical Society, pp. 211–213 .
  • Jensen, Johan Ludwig William Valdemar (1895), "Note numéro 245. Deuxième réponse. Remarques relatives aux réponses du MM. Franel et Kluyver", L'Intermédiaire des Mathématiciens, Gauthier-Villars, II: 346–347 .
  • Mohammed, Mohamud (2005), "Infinite families of accelerated series for some classical constants by the Markov-WZ method", Discrete Mathematics and Theoretical Computer Science, Springer, 7: 11–24 .
  • Mollin, Richard A. (2009), Advanced Number Theory with Applications, Discrete Mathematics and Its Applications, CRC Press, p. 220, ISBN 9781420083293 .
  • Plouffe, Simon (1998), Identities inspired from Ramanujan Notebooks II .
  • Plouffe, Simon, Zeta(3) or Apéry constant to 2000 places .
  • Ramaswami, V. (1934), "Notes on Riemann's -function", J. London Math. Soc., 9 (3): 165–169, doi:10.1112/jlms/s1-9.3.165 .
  • Rivoal, Tanguy (2000), "La fonction zêta de Riemann prend une infinité de valeurs irrationnelles aux entiers impairs", Comptes Rendus de l'Académie des Sciences, Série I, 331 (4): 267–270, arXiv:math/0008051, Bibcode:2000CRASM.331..267R, doi:10.1016/S0764-4442(00)01624-4 .
  • Setti, Robert J. (2015), Apéry's Constant - Zeta(3) - 200 Billion Digits, archived from the original on 2013-10-08 .
  • Srivastava, H. M. (December 2000), "Some Families of Rapidly Convergent Series Representations for the Zeta Functions" (PDF), Taiwanese Journal of Mathematics, 4 (4): 569–599, OCLC 36978119, retrieved 2015-08-22 .
  • van der Poorten, Alfred (1979), "A proof that Euler missed ... Apéry's proof of the irrationality of " (PDF), The Mathematical Intelligencer, 1 (4): 195–203, doi:10.1007/BF03028234, archived from the original (PDF) on 2011-07-06 .
  • Wedeniwski, Sebastian (2001), Simon Plouffe, ed., The Value of Zeta(3) to 1,000,000 places, Project Gutenberg (Message to Simon Plouffe, with all decimal places but a shorter text edited by Simon Plouffe).
  • Wedeniwski, Sebastian (13 December 1998), The Value of Zeta(3) to 1,000,000 places (Message to Simon Plouffe, with original text but only some decimal places).
  • Weisstein, Eric W. "Apéry's constant". MathWorld.
  • Yee, Alexander J. (2009), Large Computations .
  • Yee, Alexander J. (2015), Zeta(3) - Apéry's Constant
  • Nag, Dipanjan (2015), Calculated Apéry’s constant to 400,000,000,000 Digit, A world record
  • Zudilin, Wadim (2001), "One of the numbers , , , is irrational", Russ. Math. Surv., 56 (4): 774–776, Bibcode:2001RuMaS..56..774Z, doi:10.1070/RM2001v056n04ABEH000427 .
  • Zudilin, Wadim (2002), An elementary proof of Apéry's theorem, arXiv:math/0202159, Bibcode:2002math......2159Z .

Credits

This article incorporates material from Apéry's constant on PlanetMath, which is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.