Convergence of \(p\)-series revisited with applications (Q884219)

It is a well-known result in classical analysis that the \(p\)-series is convergent for \(p > 1\) and divergent for all other values. In this paper, the authors construct two sequences \(\{l_k(p)\}\) and \(\{u_k(p)\}\) for a given convergent \(p\)-series with the help of the partial sums of the \(p\)-series and show that the sum of the \(p\)-series lies between \(l_k(p)\) and \(u_k(p)\) for all values of \(k\) where \(\lim_{k \rightarrow \infty} (u_k(p) - l_k(p)) = 0\). This proves that these two sequences are adjacent and have the sum of the \(p\)-series as their limit. The result provides an explicit technique to estimate the sum of a convergent \(p\)-series. In case of a divergent \(p\)-series, lower and upper bounds of the (\(kn\))th partial sum are also constructed. The results extend the results obtained by Hansheng and Lu (2005).