On the irrationality of certain super-polynomially decaying series

Autorzy

Dane publikacji

  • DOI: 10.4064/cm9628-5-2025

  • Tom 179

  • Zeszyt 1

  • Czasopismo: Colloquium Mathematicum

  • Strony: 55-68

  • Data publikacji online: 21.09.2025

Liczba wyświetleń: 0

Liczba pobrań: 0

Abstrakt

We give a negative answer to the question by Paul Erdős and Ronald Graham on whether the series $$ \sum _{n=1}^{\infty} \frac{1}{(n+1)(n+2)\cdots (n+f(n))}$$ has irrational sum whenever $(f(n))_{n=1}^{\infty }$ is a sequence of positive integers converging to infinity. To achieve this, we generalize a classical observation of Sōichi Kakeya on the set of all subsums of a convergent positive series. We also discuss why the same problem is likely difficult when $(f(n))_{n=1}^{\infty }$ is additionally assumed to be increasing.