Power partitions and saddle-point method

Abstract

For $k⩾1$, denote by $p_k(n)$ the number of partitions of an integer $n$ into $k$-th powers. In this note, we apply the saddle-point method to provide a new proof for the well-known asymptotic expansion of $p_k(n)$. This approach turns out to significantly simplify those of Wright (1934), Vaughan (2015) and Gafni (2016).

An error in the proof of Lemma 2.3 has been corrected