A probabilistic proof of the Andrews--Gordon identities (Q1764905)

The Andrews-Gordon identities were stated in [\textit{G. E. Andrews}, An analytic generalization of the Rogers-Ramanujan identities for odd moduli, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 71, 4082--4085 (1974; Zbl 0289.10010)]. These identities were proved by Fulman in extreme cases. Following the ideas of Fulman (i.e. evaluating a certain transition probability in a Markov chain in two ways) the author extends the proof such that it holds in general. In doing so he uses a \(q\)-Chu-Vandermonde identity that can be found in [\textit{G. Gasper} and \textit{M. Rahman}, Basic hypergeometric series (Cambridge University Press: Cambridge) (1990; Zbl 0695.33001)], from which he derives the fact that allmost all terms in the expression for the named transition probability vanish. The remaining (two) terms can be evaluated using a formula for a Jacobian triple product (that can be found in [\textit{G. E. Andrews}, The theory of partitions (Addison-Wesley, Reading, MA) (1976; Zbl 0371.10001)]), which then gives the desired result. The given proof is short and elegant but depends quite heavily on results in other papers. Besides there are two missprints in the paper: In the evaluation of \(S(m,n)\) on page 82 the \(q^{m+n-2}/q^{2n}\) should read \(q^{m+n+2}/q^{2n}\) and in the first line of page 83 one should take \(c= q^{1-2n}\) in stead of \(q^{-1-2n}\).