Rademacher’s Infinite Partial Fractions Conjecture Is (Almost Certainly) False

Document Type

Presentation

Presentation Date

11-5-2012

Abstract or Description

This is joint work with Doron Zeilberger. Let pm(n) denote the number of partitions of n with at most m summands. The generating function of pm(n) is fm(x)=∑n≥0pm(n)xn=1/(1−x)(1−x2)⋯(1−xm). For any fixed m, it is theoretically straightforward to find the partial fraction decomposition of the generating function for pm(n). Rademacher made a beautiful and natural conjecture concerning the limiting behavior of the coefficients in the partial fraction decomposition of fm(x) as m→∞, which was published posthumously in 1973. Little progress had been made on this conjecture until just recently, perhaps in large part due to the difficulty of actually calculating Rademacher's coefficients for even moderately large values of m. Zeilberger and I found and implemented a fast algorithm for computing Rademacher's coefficients, and as a result of the data we collected, it now seems quite clear that Rademacher's conjecture must be FALSE! We present some new theorems and conjectures concerning the behavior of Rademacher's coefficients.

Sponsorship/Conference/Institution

Ramanujan 125 Conference

Location

Gainsville, FL

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