On sums of powers of cosecs

Abstract

The finite sums of powers of cosecs occur in numerous situations, both physical and mathematical, examples being the Casimir effect, Renyi entropy, Verlinde's formula and Dedekind sums. I here present some further discussion which consists mainly of a reprise of early work by H.M.Jeffery in 1862-64 which has fallen by the wayside and whose results are being reproduced up to the present day. The motivation is partly historical justice and partly that, because of the continuing appearance of the sums, his particular methods deserve re--exposure. For example, simple trigonometric generating functions are found and these have a field theoretic, Green function significance and I make a few comments in the topic of Rényi entropies.

14 pages