Convergent and Divergent Series in Physics

Abstract

The aim of this review, based on a series of four lectures held at the 22nd "Saalburg" Summer School (2016), is to cover selected topics in the theory of perturbation series and their summation. The first part is devoted to strategies for accelerating the rate of convergence of convergent series, namely Richardson extrapolation, and the Shanks transformations, and also covers a few techniques for accelerating the convergence of Fourier series. The second part focuses on divergent series, and on the tools allowing one to retrieve information from them. These techniques include Euler summation, Borel summation, generic summation, and the method of continued functions, including in particular the Padé theory based on continued fractions. Finally, a brief discussion of Stieltjes series and functions is given in order to study the convergence properties of Padé approximants.

arXiv commentLecture notes of the 22nd "Saalburg" Summer School (2016); 39 pages, 1 figure, 1 table

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