paper

An improved Copson inequality

arXiv:2508.00388

Abstract

In this paper, we prove that the discrete Copson inequality (E.T. Copson, \emph{Notes on a series of positive terms}, J. London Math. Soc., 2 (1927), 49-51) of one-dimension in general cases admits an improvement. In fact we study the improvement of the following Copson's inequality \begin{align*} &\displaystyle\sum_{n=1}^{\infty}\frac{Q_{n}^α|A_n-A_{n-1}|^{2}}{q_{n}}\geq\frac{(α-1)^2}{4}\displaystyle\sum_{n=1}^{\infty} \frac{q_{n}}{Q_{n}^{2-α}}|A_{n}|^{2}, \end{align*}where , , for , is a positive real sequence and is a sequence of complex numbers. We show that if is decreasing then the above inequality has an improvement for . We also prove that for some increasing sequences the above inequality can also be improved. Indeed, we prove that for and , the corresponding Copson inequalities admit an improvement for and , respectively. Further, we show that in case of , the reduced Copson inequality (known as Hardy's inequality with power weights) has achieved an improvement for .

16 pages

An improved Copson inequality · wovepaper