The ultimate condition to generalize monotonicity for Abel's and Dirichlet's criteria (Q485028)

The authors address an interesting problem in the search for generalizations of the concept monotonicity, in order to derive theorems on the convergence of number sequences in the vein of the Dirichlet and Abel conditions. Their starting point is the so-called ``rest bounded variation'', studied by \textit{L. Leindler} [Anal. Math. 27, No. 4, 279--285 (2001; Zbl 1002.42002)] for nonnegative sequences. A real null sequence \(A:=\{a_n\}_{n=1}^{\infty}\) is called of ``rest bounded variation'' if for all \(m\geq 1\) \[ \sum_{n=m}^{\infty}\,| \Delta a_n| := \sum_{n=m}^{\infty}\,| a_n-a_m| \leq M(A) | a_m| , \] where \(M(A)\) is a positive constant, depending on the sequence \(A\) only. The authors then introduce an increasing sequence \(\{R(n)\}\) with \(R(n+1)/R(n)={\mathcal O}(1)\) and assume that a real sequence \(\{a_n\}\) satisfies \[ \lim_{n\rightarrow\infty}\,a_n=0,\tag{1} \] and \[ \sum_{k=n}^{\infty}\,\left| \Delta {a_k\over R(k)}\right| \leq M{| a_n| \over R(n)}.\tag{2} \] Moreover, let the real sequence \(\{b_n\}\) satisfy \[ \sup_{n\geq 1}\, \left| \sum_{k=1}^n \,b_k\right| <\infty. \tag{3} \] The result of the paper is then Theorem 2.1. Let \(\{R(n)\}\) be an increasing sequence with \(R(n+1)/R(n)={\mathcal O}(1)\). Then for all sequences \(\{a_n\}\) satisfying (1), (2) and sequences \(\{b_n\}\) satisfying (3), the series \(\sum_{n=1}^{\infty}\,a_nb_n\) converges if and only if \(R(n)={\mathcal O}(1)\) for all \(n\).