Glaisher's divisors and infinite products

Abstract

Ramanujan gave a recurrence relation for the partition function in terms of the sum of the divisor function $\sigma (n)$. In 1885, J.W. Glaisher considered seven divisor sums closely related to the sum of the divisors function. We develop a calculus to associate a generating function with each of these divisor sums. This yields analogues of Ramanujan's recurrence relation for several partition-theoretic functions as well as $r_k(n)$ and $t_k(n)$, functions counting the number of ways of writing a number as a sum of squares (respectively, triangular) numbers. As by-products of this association, we obtain several convolutions, recurrences and congruences for divisor functions. We give alternate proofs of two classical theorems, one due to Legendre and the other -- Ramanujan's congruence $p(5n+4)\equiv 0(\mathrm{mod}5)$.

17 pages. Second version with substantial additions to the number of results