Generalisations of some theorems of Ramanujan (Q1102995)

Let \[ \phi_{k,N}(x) = f(-x^{2k},-x^{N-2k})/f(-x^k,-x^{N- k}) = \sum^{\infty}_{n=0}u_k(n)x^n,\] where \(f(a,b)=f(b,a)=1+\displaystyle\sum^{\infty}_{n=1}(ab)^{n(n-1)/2}(a^n+b^n)\). The main result of this paper is to show that for general \(N\) satisfying \((N,6)=1\), \(1\leq k<N/2\), \((k,N)=1\) and \(0\leq \ell <N\), there exists an integer \(n_ 0\geq 0\) depending on \(N, k\) and \(\ell\) such that \(u_k(Nn+\ell)\), \(n\geq n_ 0\), all have the same sign. Like Ramanujan's method, the idea is to express \(\displaystyle\frac{1}{N}\sum_{\rho}\rho^{- \ell}x^{-\ell /N}\phi_{k,N}(\rho x^{1/N})\), where \(\rho\) runs through all \(N\)th roots of unity, in terms of \(f(a,b)\) and to use Andrews' technique to apply Gordon's theorem.