Stieltjes Series

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As already remarked, the asymptotic condition (5.2) can be the starting point for the construction of remainder estimates . In my opinion, it should be possible to derive many interesting results which could lead via the sequence transformations (4.5) and (4.11) to powerful approximation schemes for functions defined by slowly convergent or divergent series. For instance, in [29] it was shown that the asymptotic series for the modified Bessel function of the second kind,

which diverges quite strongly for all arguments transformations and

, can be summed efficiently by the sequence

. These two transformations are based upon the remainder

estimate (5.3), which corresponds to the first term of the series not contained in the partial sum. It would be interesting to find out whether and how well the efficiency of the ``parent'' sequence transformations (4.5) and (4.11) could be increased by better truncation error estimates. Special results of that kind would certainly be interesting. However, it would be much more interesting to construct remainder estimates which are generally valid for whole classes of functions. Of course, this would probably be much more difficult. Nevertheless, I hope that the derivation of general results could at least in the case of Stieltjes series be accomplished. A function is called Stieltjes function if it can be expressed as a Stieltjes integral according to

Here,

is a positive measure on and which has for all

, which assumes infinitely many different values on finite and positive moments defined by

The formal series expansion for

, which need not be convergent,

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Stieltjes Series

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is called a Stieltjes series if its coefficients according to eq. (6.3):

are moments of a positive measure

on

The classic example of a Stieltjes function with a strongly divergent Stieltjes series is the Euler integral (2.6) and its associated asymptotic series, the Euler series (2.7). The series (5.16) for the integral representation , which was summed in Table 3, is also a Stieltjes series. This follows from

We only have to set positive measure

for are given by

and

for

. The moments

of this

Stieltjes functions and their associated Stieltjes series are very important in the theory of divergent series, since they possess a highly developed representation and convergence theory [25,71,26,72,73,74]. Moreover, Stieltjes functions and Stieltjes series are also of considerable importance in quantum mechanical perturbation theory. An example is the quartic anharmonic oscillator which is described by the Hamiltonian

Simon [75] could show that the perturbation series for an energy eigenvalue of the quartic anharmonic oscillator oscillator,

which diverges quite strongly for every nonzero coupling constant , is the negative of a Stieltjes series. If the positive measure the Stieltjes moments corresponding to the Stieltjes function , the value of could be determined directly from

could at least in principle be computed via the integral

representation (6.2) even if the Stieltjes series diverges. For instance, the measure corresponding to the

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Stieltjes Series

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asymptotic series (6.1) for the modified Bessel function

can be found quite easily [29, eq. (2.25),].

Moreover, there is an extensive literature on moment problems and their solution [76]. Necessary and sufficient conditions, which for instance guarantee that Pad approximants are able to sum a divergent Stieltjes series, have been known for long. An example is the condition that all Hankel determinants formed from the moments have to be strictly positive [26, Theorem 5.1.2,]. Unfortunately, the practical application of this and similar other conditions is by no means simple, in particular if only the numerical values of a finite number of Stieltjes moments , , ..., are available. However, there is a comparatively simple sufficient condition, the so-called Carleman condition. If the moments satisfy

then the corresponding moment problem possesses a unique solution, and the sequences

of Pad

approximants converge for j > - 1 to the value of the corresponding Stieltjes function as [77, Theorem 12.11f and Corollary 12.11h,]. It can be shown that the Carleman condition is satisfied if the moments do not grow faster than as , with C being a suitable positive constant [78, Theorem 1.3,]. The Carleman condition (6.10) implies that the Euler series (2.7) can be summed by the Pad approximants with fixed j > - 1. However, the numerical results in Tables 2 and 3 demonstrate convincingly that Pad summation need not be the most efficient way of extracting useful numerical information from the terms of a divergent Stieltjes series. Consequently, it should be worth while to investigate also other techniques for the summation of divergent Stieltjes series.

next up previous Next: Remainder Estimates for Up: OPEN PROBLEMS IN ASYMPTOTICS Previous: On the Choice

Rob Corless Wed Sep 13 12:04:01 PDT 1995

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