Two theorems of Gauss and allied identities proved arithmetically (Q2546899)

This paper is devoted to giving arithmetic proofs of two of Gauss's identities: \[ \sum_{-\infty}^{\infty}(-1)^nq^{n(2n-1)}=\prod_{n=1}^{\infty}\frac{(1-q^{2n})}{(1+q^{2n-1})}\, , \] \[ \sum_{-\infty}^{\infty}(-1)^nq^{n^2}=\prod_{n=1}^{\infty}\frac{(1-q^n)}{(1+q^n)}\, . \] The techniques developed are then applied to a number of formulae for basic hypergeometric series.