Dirichlet \(L-\)functions, elliptic curves, hypergeometric functions, and rational approximation with partial sums of power series (Q2448546)

From the introduction: ``Given a sequence of integer numbers \(\{a_n\}\), \(0 \leq n < \infty\), consider the exponential generating function \(G(s)\) given by \[ G(s) := \sum_{n=0}^\infty \frac{a_n}{n!} s^n, \qquad s \in \mathbb{C}. \] We focus on the Diophantine approximation of the values of \(G(s)\) at rational points \(s = r\) by partial sums of the power series expansion above. In the particular case that \(a_n = 1\) for all \(n\), \(G(s) = e^s\). If, in addition, we choose \(r = 1\), then we are asking how well \(e\) can be approximated by partial sums \(\sum_{n=0}^N \frac{1}{n!}\). \textit{J. Sondow} [Am. Math. Mon. 113, No. 7, 637--641 (2006; Zbl 1149.11035)] conjectured that exactly two of these partial sums are also convergents to the (simple) continued fraction of \(e\). Among other related results, \textit{J. Sondow} and \textit{K. Schalm} [Contemp. Math. 457, 273--284 (2008; Zbl 1159.11004)] showed that for almost all \(N\), the corresponding partial sum \(\sum_{n=0}^N \frac{1}{n!}\) is not a convergent to the continued fraction of \(e\). In the present paper, in broad and diverse settings, we raise many conjectures that generalize or are analogues of Sondow's conjecture. For a wide variety of sequences \(\{a_n\}\) of polynomial growth in \(n\) and for \(s = r\)'' \(\ldots\), ``we examine approximations by partial sums and conjecture that they coincide with approximations by (simple) continued fractions only a finite number of times. We then obtain bounds for the number of times the sequences of partial sums and convergents of the continued fraction coalesce. For those results for which er is a special case, our bounds improve on those obtained by Sondow and Schalm. We furthermore expand the discussion from convergents of continued fractions to more general Diophantine inequalities.''