English

An improved Copson inequality

Classical Analysis and ODEs 2025-08-04 v1 Functional Analysis

Abstract

In this paper, we prove that the discrete Copson inequality (E.T. Copson, \emph{Notes on a series of positive terms}, J. London Math. Soc., 2 (1927), 49-51) of one-dimension in general cases admits an improvement. In fact we study the improvement of the following Copson's inequality \begin{align*} &\displaystyle\sum_{n=1}^{\infty}\frac{Q_{n}^{\alpha}|A_n-A_{n-1}|^{2}}{q_{n}}\geq\frac{(\alpha-1)^2}{4}\displaystyle\sum_{n=1}^{\infty} \frac{q_{n}}{Q_{n}^{2-\alpha}}|A_{n}|^{2}, \end{align*}where α[0,1)\alpha\in[0,1), An=q1a1+q2a2++qnanA_{n}=q_{1}a_{1}+ q_{2}a_{2}+ \ldots +q_{n}a_{n}, Qn=q1+q2++qnQ_{n}=q_1+q_2+\ldots+q_{n} for nNn\in \mathbb{N}, {qn}\{q_n\} is a positive real sequence and {an}\{a_n\} is a sequence of complex numbers. We show that if {qn}\{q_n\} is decreasing then the above inequality has an improvement for α[1/3,1)\alpha\in [1/3, 1). We also prove that for some increasing sequences {qn}\{q_n\} the above inequality can also be improved. Indeed, we prove that for qn=nq_{n}=n and qn=n3q_n=n^3, nNn\in \mathbb{N} the corresponding Copson inequalities admit an improvement for α[1750,1)\alpha\in[\frac{17}{50}, 1) and α[0,12]\alpha\in[0, \frac{1}{2}], respectively. Further, we show that in case of qn=1q_{n}=1, nNn\in \mathbb{N} the reduced Copson inequality (known as Hardy's inequality with power weights) has achieved an improvement for α[0,1)\alpha\in[0, 1).

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2508.00388,
  title  = {An improved Copson inequality},
  author = {Bikram Das and Atanu Manna},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2508.00388},
  year   = {2025}
}

Comments

16 pages

R2 v1 2026-07-01T04:29:00.423Z