SearcharxivSearch

arXiv · 2204.00962

Telescoping continued fractions for the error term in Stirling's formula

Abstract

In this paper, we introduce telescoping continued fractions to find lower bounds for the error term $r_n$ in Stirling's approximation $\displaystyle n! = \sqrt{2\pi}n^{n+1/2}e^{-n}e^{r_n}.$ This improves lower bounds given earlier by Ces\`{a}ro (1922), Robbins (1955), Nanjundiah (1959), Maria (1965) and Popov (2017). The expression is in terms of a continued fraction, together with an algorithm to find successive terms of this continued fraction. The technique we introduce allows us to experimentally obtain upper and lower bounds for a sequence of convergents of a continued fraction in terms of a difference of two continued fractions.

Explore related subjects

Keep this discovery

BibTeXRIS

Gaurav Bhatnagar, Krishnan Rajkumar. 2022-04-03. Telescoping continued fractions for the error term in Stirling's formula. https://arxiv.org/abs/2204.00962

Cite the original work for its findings. Save a collection to share your selection of sources.

KEEP EXPLORING

Related papers

On the log-concavity of the composite Bessel function $x^{\alpha}J_{\nu }\left( \beta x^{\gamma}\right) $

For a twice differentiable function $f:\left( a,b\right) \rightarrow \mathbb{R}$ define $v\left( f\right) =f^{\prime}f^{\prime}-f^{\prime\prime }f.$ It is well known that the positivity of $v\left( f\right) $ implies that the function $\left\vert f\right\vert $ is strictly log-concave on each subinterval which does not contain zeros of $f.$ In this paper we provide criteria for the positivity of $v\left( F\right) $ for the composite Bessel function $F\left( x\right) =J_{\alpha,\beta,\gamma,\nu}\left( x\right) :=x^{\alpha}J_{\nu}\left( \beta x^{\gamma}\right) $ for positive numbers $\beta$ and $\gamma$ and real numbers $\alpha$ and $\nu.$

math.CA

Riesz capacity ratios with negative exponents

We investigate sharp inequalities for ratios of Riesz capacities with negative exponents by combining computational experiments with rigorous analysis. For finite subsets of the line, we prove positivity of equilibrium masses when $-1<p<0$, enabling numerical tests of conjectured extremal ratios. In the plane, comparisons of the disk with regular polygon vertex sets reveal a cascade of transitions among the tested competitors and suggest a precise conjecture for the equilibrium measure of odd polygons, for which we give a partial proof. Numerical intersections of equality curves show that the regions where these sets outperform the disk are not simply nested. Similar numerical intersections occur in three dimensions between the regular-simplex equality curve and those of explicit five-point and six-point configurations. Motivated by the dimensional dependence of these comparisons, we prove that for each fixed $p<-2<q<0$, the regular simplex has a larger capacity ratio than the ball in all sufficiently large dimensions. Accompanying Python and Mathematica code supports reproduction and further testing of the conjectures.

math.CA

Shorter proof of dimension-free $L^p$ estimates for maximal Riesz transforms

We provide a shorter and more direct proof of $L^p$ estimates for maximal Riesz transforms (of an arbitrary order) in terms of the corresponding Riesz transforms, with a constant independent of the dimension of the Euclidean space $\mathbb R^d$. This result was originally proved by Mateu, Orobitg, P\'erez and Verdera with a constant depending on the dimension, and improved to a dimension-free inequality by Kucharski, Wr\'obel and Zienkiewicz.

math.CA