A recurrence formula for leaping convergents of non-regular continued fractions (Q2469510)

Given a regular continued fractions \([a_0,a_1,a_2,\cdots]\), its \(n\)-th traditional classic convergent is defined by \(p_n/q_n=[a_0,a_1,\cdots,a_n]\) for \(n=0,1,2,\cdots\). Leaping convergents are those of every \(r\)-th convergent \(p_{rn+i}/q_{rn+i}\), \(n=1,2,\cdots)\) for fixed integers \(r\) and \(i\) with \(r\geq 2\) and \(i=0,1,\cdots,r-1\). This leaping step \(r\) can be chosen as the length of period in the continued fraction. The first author studied the leaping convergents \(p_{3n+1}/q_{3n+1}\) for the continued fractions of \(e=[2;\overline{1,2k,1}]_{k=1}^\infty\) and obtained some arithmetic properties. Komatsu studied those \(p_{3n}/q_{3n}\) for \(e^{1/s}=[1;\overline{s(2k-1)-1,1,1}]_{k=1}^\infty\), \(s\geq 2\). He has also extended such results for some more general continues fractions. Such concepts have been generalized in the case of regular continued fractions. In this paper leaping convergents in non-regular continued fractions are considered so that a more general three term relation is satisfied. Moreover, the leaping step \(r\) need necessarily be equal to the length of the period. As one of the applications a new recurrence formula for leaping convergents of Apéry's continued fraction of \(\zeta(3)\) is shown.