English

Small values of signed harmonic sums

Number Theory 2020-02-25 v2

Abstract

For every τR\tau\in\mathbb{R} and every integer NN, let mN(τ)\mathfrak{m}_N(\tau) be the minimum of the distance of τ\tau from the sums n=1Nsn/n\sum_{n=1}^N s_n/n, where s1,,sn{1,+1}s_1, \ldots, s_n \in \{-1, +1\}. We prove that mN(τ)<exp ⁣(C(logN)2)\mathfrak{m}_N(\tau) < \exp\!\big(-C(\log N)^2\big), for all sufficiently large positive integers NN (depending on CC and τ\tau), where CC is any positive constant less than 1/log41/\log 4.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1806.05402,
  title  = {Small values of signed harmonic sums},
  author = {Sandro Bettin and Giuseppe Molteni and Carlo Sanna},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1806.05402},
  year   = {2020}
}

Comments

minor corrections to the text, a small improvement to Proposition 2.7

R2 v1 2026-06-23T02:29:42.708Z