On the general Dedekind sums and its reciprocity formula (Q968050): Difference between revisions

The Dedekind sums \(s(h,k)\) first arose in the transformation formula of the logarithm of the Dedekind-eta function. They are defined as follows: If \(h\) and \(k\) are coprime integers with \(k>0\), \[ s\left( h,k\right) =\sum_{a=1}^{k-1}\left( \left( \frac{a}{k}\right) \right) \left( \left( \frac{ha}{k}\right) \right) , \] where \[ \left( \left( x\right) \right) =\begin{cases} x-[x]_{G}-\frac{1}{2}, & \text{if }x\text{ is not an integer} \\ 0, & \text{if }x\text{ is an integer,} \end{cases} \] \([x]_{G}\) being the largest integer \(\leq x\). The most important property of Dedekind sums is the reciprocity law, which is given by \[ s(h,k)+s(k,h)=\frac{1}{12}\left( \frac{h}{k}+\frac{k}{h}+\frac{1}{hk}\right) -\frac{1}{4}. \] Dedekind sums were generalized by various mathematicians. Here, we list some of them. Apostol defined generalized Dedekind sums \(s_{n}(h,k)\) as follows: \[ s_{n}(h,k)=\sum_{a=1}^{k-1}\frac{a}{k}\overline{B}_{n}\left( \frac{ha}{k}\right) , \] where \(n,h\) and \(k\) are positive integers with\(\left( h,k\right) =1\) and \(\overline{B}_{n}\left( x\right) \) is the \(n\)th Bernoulli function, which is defined as follows: \[ \overline{B}_{n}\left( x\right) =B_{n}\left( x-\left[ x\right] \right) \] and \[ \overline{B}_{1}\left( x\right) =\begin{cases} B_{1}\left( x-\left[ x\right] \right) , & \text{if }x\notin \mathbb{Z} \\ 0, & \text{if }x\in \mathbb{Z}, \end{cases} \] where \(B_{n}\left( x\right) \) is the Bernoulli polynomials. The Dedekind-Apostol sums also generalize as follows: \[ s_{n,m}(h,k)=\sum\limits_{a=1}^{k-1}\overline{B}_{n}\left( \frac{a}{k} \right) \overline{B}_{n}\left( \frac{ha}{k}\right) , \] For the special values of \(m=3\) and \(n=1,\) the author studies the reciprocity law in the usual way.