Aptly conveys the beauty and power of q-series Accessible to advanced undergraduates, graduate students, and researchers

Historical notes enrich the readers understanding of the subject

First monograph to focus uniquely on q-series

Klappentext

This unique book explores the world of q, known technically as basic hypergeometric series, and represents the author's personal and life-long studyinspired by Ramanujanof aspects of this broad topic. While the level of mathematical sophistication is graduated, the book is designed to appeal to advanced undergraduates as well as researchers in the field. The principal aims are to demonstrate the power of the methods and the beauty of the results. The book contains novel proofs of many results in the theory of partitions and the theory of representations, as well as associated identities. Though not specifically designed as a textbook, parts of it may be presented in course work; it has many suitable exercises.

After an introductory chapter, the power of q-series is demonstrated with proofs of Lagrange's four-squares theorem and Gauss's two-squares theorem. Attention then turns to partitions and Ramanujan's partition congruences. Several proofs of these are given throughout the book. Many chapters are devoted to related and other associated topics. One highlight is a simple proof of an identity of Jacobi with application to string theory. On the way, we come across the RogersRamanujan identities and the RogersRamanujan continued fraction, the famous forty identities of Ramanujan, and the representation results of Jacobi, Dirichlet and Lorenz, not to mention many other interesting and beautiful results. We also meet a challenge of D.H. Lehmer to give a formula for the number of partitions of a number into four squares, prove a mysterious partition theorem of H. Farkas and prove a conjecture of R.Wm. Gosper which even Erds couldn't do. The book concludes with a look at Ramanujan's remarkable tau function.

Inhalt
Foreword.- Preface.- 1. Introduction.- 2. Jacobi's two-squares and four-squares theorems.- 3. Ramanujan's partition congruences.- 4. Ramanujan's partition congruences a uniform proof.- 5. Ramanujan's "most beautiful identity".- 6. Ramanujan's partition congruences for powers of 5.- 7. Ramanujan's partition congruences for powers of 7.- 8. Ramanujan's 5-dissection of Euler's product.- 9. A "difficult and deep" identity of Ramanujan.- 10. The quintuple product identity.- 11. Winquist's identity.- 12. The crank of a partition.- 13. Two more proofs of p(11n + 6) 0 (mod 11), and more.- 14. Partitions where even parts come in two colours.- 15. The RogersRamanujan identities and the RogersRamanujan continued fraction.- 16. The series expansion of the RogersRamanujan continued fraction.- 17. The 2- and 4-dissections of Ramanujan's continued fraction and its reciprocal.- 18. The series expansion of the Ramanujan-Gollnitz-Gordon continued fraction and its reciprocal.- 19. Jacobi's aequatio identica satis abstrusa.- 20. Two modular equations.- 21. A letter from Fitzroy House.- 22. The cubic functions of Borwein, Borwein and Garvan.- 23. Some classical results on representations.- 24. Further classical results on representations.- 25. Further results on representations.- 26. Even more representation results.- 27. Representation results and Lambert series.- 28. The JordanKronecker identity.- 29. Melham's identities.- 30. Partitions into four squares.- 31. Partitions into four distinct squares of equal parity.- 32. Partitions with odd parts distinct.- 33. Partitions with even parts distinct.- 34. Some identities involving phi(q) and  psi(q).- 35. Some useful parametrisations.- 36. Overpartitions.- 37. Bipartitions with odd parts distinct.- 38. Overcubic partitions.- 39. Generalised Frobenius partitions.- 40. Somemodular equations of Ramanujan.- 41. Identities involving k = qR(q)R(q2)2.- 42. Identities involving v=q1/2(q,q7;q8)infinity/(q3,q5;q8)infinity.- 43. Ramanujan's tau function.- Appendix.- Index.