English

General formulas for a class of Euler sums

Number Theory 2026-04-06 v1

Abstract

Let Hk=1+1/2+1/3++1/kH_k = 1 + 1/2 + 1/3 + \cdots + 1/k denote the kkth harmonic number. We present an easy-to-implement algorithm for the computation of explicit closed-form evaluations, in terms of the digamma and polygamma functions, for Euler sums of the form \begin{align} \sum_{k=1}^\infty R(k) H_k, \end{align} where R(k)R(k) is a rational function (quotient of two polynomials) whose denominator degree is at least two larger than the numerator degree. We apply the same method to show how the computation of a general formula for Euler sums of the form \begin{align*} \sum_{k=1}^\infty \frac{H_k}{(m_1 k + n_1)^{p_1} (m_2 k + n_2)^{p_2} \cdots (m_r k + n_r)^{p_r}} \end{align*} reduces to partial fraction decomposition. We present explicit formulae for sums with one or two terms in the denominator, with powers pip_i ranging up to 3, and with multipliers mim_i ranging up to 4. We also include results for related Euler sums such as \begin{align*} \sum_{k=1}^\infty \frac{k^q H_k}{(m k + n)^p}. \end{align*} Computation of Euler sums directly to very high precision enables us to rigorously check the above-mentioned formulas in many specific cases.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2604.02384,
  title  = {General formulas for a class of Euler sums},
  author = {David H Bailey and Ross McPhedran and Bruno Salvy},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2604.02384},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

23 pp, 124 equations, 1 algorithm, 1 Maple code

R2 v1 2026-07-01T11:51:43.040Z