Automatic Dirichlet series (Q1976814)

A sequence \(\{u_n\}_{n\geq 0}\) is \(d\)-automatic if its \(n\)-th term can be computed by a finite-state machine using the base \(d\) expansion of the integer \(n\). To such a sequence corresponds a sequence of \(t\)-dimensional vectors \(\{U_n\}_{n\geq 0}\), whose first components give the sequence \(\{u_n\}_{n\geq 0}\), and \(d\) matrices \(A_0,A_1,\ldots,A_{d-1}\) of size \(t\times t\) such that \(U_{dn+1}=A_iU_n\) and each row of each \(A_j\) has exactly one entry equal to 1 and the others all equal to 0. Consider the vectors of Dirichlet series \[ F(s)=\sum_{n=0}^\infty{U_n\over(n+1)^s} \;\text{ and} \;G(s)=\sum_{n=0}^\infty{U_n\over n^s}. \] The authors show by an explicit construction that \(F\) and \(G\) have meromorphic continuations to the whole complex plane whose poles, if any, are located on a finite number of semi-lattices. In fact, \(F\) satisfies the functional equation \[ \left(I-d^{-s}\sum_{j=0}^{d-1}A_j\right)F(s) =\sum_{j=0}^{d-1}A_j\sum_{k=1}^\infty{s+k-1\choose k}(d-j-1)^k {F(s+k)\over d^{s+k}}. \] The functional equation yields an explicit evaluation for \(\lim_{s\rightarrow 1_+}(s-1)F(s)\) and hence for the logarithmic frequency of the digit \(a\) in the sequence \(\{u_n\}_{n\geq 0}\). This is an attractive way of deriving Cobham's theorem on the existence of these logarithmic frequencies. The ideas also lead to some nice infinite products. For example, let \(\{\varepsilon_n\}_{n\geq 0}\) denote the Thue-Morse sequence, where \(\varepsilon_n=\pm 1\) according as the sum of the binary digits of \(n\) is even or odd. Then \[ \prod_{n\geq 0}\left({2n+1\over 2n+2}\right)^{\varepsilon_n}={1\over\sqrt 2}. \]