A sequence of best parabola theorems for continued fractions (Q1178593)

The paper is based upon Thron's parabola theorem from 1958. Let, for a fixed \(\alpha\in(-\pi/2,\pi/2)\) and a fixed sequence \(\{c_ n\}\) of negative numbers, \(\{P_ \alpha,n\}\) be the sequence of parabolic regions defined by \[ | z| -\hbox{Re}(ze^{-i2\alpha})\leq 2| c_ n| \hbox{cos}^ 2\alpha. \] One of the statements in the parabola theorem is that, under certain conditions on \(\{c_ n\}\), continued fractions \(K(a_ n/1)\), where \(0\neq a_ n\in P_{\alpha,n}\) for all \(n\), converge if and only if \[ \sum^{\infty}_{n=1}\prod^ n_{k=1}| a_ k| ^{n+k+1}=\infty. \] The authors construct sequences \(\{c_ n\}\) where \(c_ n\uparrow -1/4\), such that the corresponding parabola theorems are best in a certain sense: Let \(T\in N_ 0\) and \(p_ j>0\) for \(j=0,1,\dots,T-1\) be given, and let \[ c_ n={-1\over 4}-{1\over 16}\sum^ T_{k=1}\prod^{k- 1}_{j=0}(\hbox{log}_{(j)}(n+p_ i))^{-2} \] for all \(n\in N\), where \(\hbox{log}_{(j)}\) are the iterates of the log-function, and \(\hbox{log}_{(j)}(n+p_ j)>0\) for \(j=1,2,\dots,T-1\). With these sequences (for \(T=0,1,2,\dots)\) the above statement holds, whereas it does not hold with \(c_ n\) replaced by \[ e_ n=c_ n- \varepsilon\prod^{T-1}_{j=0}(\hbox{log}_{(j)}(n+p_ j))^{- 2}+O(n^{-3}). \] They also establish a best result for the sequence \(\{\mid a_ n\mid\}\), also in terms of iterated logarithms. Finally some results on 1- and 2-limit-periodic parabolic continued fractions are proved, mainly on convergence and rate of convergence.