Sum of the first n whole number reciprocals; 1/1 + 1/2 + 1/3 + ... + 1/n
In mathematics, the n-th harmonic number is the sum of the reciprocals of the first n natural numbers:
Starting from n = 1, the sequence of harmonic numbers begins:
Harmonic numbers are related to the harmonic mean in that the n-th harmonic number is also n times the reciprocal of the harmonic mean of the first n positive integers.
Harmonic numbers have been studied since antiquity and are important in various branches of number theory. They are sometimes loosely termed harmonic series, are closely related to the Riemann zeta function, and appear in the expressions of various special functions.
The harmonic numbers roughly approximate the natural logarithm function[1]: 143 and thus the associated harmonic series grows without limit, albeit slowly. In 1737, Leonhard Euler used the divergence of the harmonic series to provide a new proof of the infinity of prime numbers. His work was extended into the complex plane by Bernhard Riemann in 1859, leading directly to the celebrated Riemann hypothesis about the distribution of prime numbers.
When the value of a large quantity of items has a Zipf's law distribution, the total value of the n most-valuable items is proportional to the n-th harmonic number. This leads to a variety of surprising conclusions regarding the long tail and the theory of network value.
The Bertrand-Chebyshev theorem implies that, except for the case n = 1, the harmonic numbers are never integers.[2]
The harmonic numbers have several interesting arithmetic properties. It is well-known that is an integer if and only if, a result often attributed to Taeisinger.[5] Indeed, using 2-adic valuation, it is not difficult to prove that for the numerator of is an odd number while the denominator of is an even number. More precisely,
with some odd integers and .
As a consequence of Wolstenholme's theorem, for any prime number the numerator of is divisible by . Furthermore, Eisenstein[6] proved that for all odd prime number it holds
In 1991, Eswarathasan and Levine[7] defined as the set of all positive integers such that the numerator of is divisible by a prime number They proved that
for all prime numbers and they defined harmonic primes to be the primes such that has exactly 3 elements.
Eswarathasan and Levine also conjectured that is a finite set for all primes and that there are infinitely many harmonic primes. Boyd[8] verified that is finite for all prime numbers up to except 83, 127, and 397; and he gave a heuristic suggesting that the density of the harmonic primes in the set of all primes should be . Sanna[9] showed that has zero asymptotic density, while Bing-Ling Wu and Yong-Gao Chen[10] proved that the number of elements of not exceeding is at most , for all .
Applications
The harmonic numbers appear in several calculation formulas, such as the digamma function
This relation is also frequently used to define the extension of the harmonic numbers to non-integer n. The harmonic numbers are also frequently used to define γ using the limit introduced earlier:
is true for every integern ≥ 1 with strict inequality if n > 1; here σ(n) denotes the sum of the divisors of n.
The eigenvalues of the nonlocal problem
are given by , where by convention , and the corresponding eigenfunctions are given by the Legendre polynomials.[12]
Generalizations
Generalized harmonic numbers
The nth generalized harmonic number of order m is given by
(In some sources, this may also be denoted by or )
The special case m = 0 gives The special case m = 1 reduces to the usual harmonic number:
The limit of as n → ∞ is finite if m > 1, with the generalized harmonic number bounded by and converging to the Riemann zeta function
The smallest natural number k such that kn does not divide the denominator of generalized harmonic number H(k, n) nor the denominator of alternating generalized harmonic number H′(k, n) is, for n=1, 2, ... :
The Roman Harmonic numbers,[13] named after Steven Roman, were introduced by Daniel Loeb and Gian-Carlo Rota in the context of a generalization of umbral calculus with logarithms.[14] There are many possible definitions, but one of them, for , is
In fact, these numbers were defined in a more general manner using Roman numbers and Roman factorials, that include negative values for . This generalization was useful in their study to define Harmonic logarithms.
Harmonic numbers for real and complex values
The formulae given above,
are an integral and a series representation for a function that interpolates the harmonic numbers and, via analytic continuation, extends the definition to the complex plane other than the negative integers x. The interpolating function is in fact closely related to the digamma function
where ψ(x) is the digamma function, and γ is the Euler–Mascheroni constant. The integration process may be repeated to obtain
which comes from the Taylor series for the digamma function ( is the Riemann zeta function).
Alternative, asymptotic formulation
When seeking to approximate Hx for a complex numberx, it is effective to first compute Hm for some large integer m. Use that as an approximation for the value of Hm+x. Then use the recursion relation Hn = Hn−1 + 1/n backwards m times, to unwind it to an approximation for Hx. Furthermore, this approximation is exact in the limit as m goes to infinity.
Specifically, for a fixed integer n, it is the case that
If n is not an integer then it is not possible to say whether this equation is true because we have not yet (in this section) defined harmonic numbers for non-integers. However, we do get a unique extension of the harmonic numbers to the non-integers by insisting that this equation continue to hold when the arbitrary integer n is replaced by an arbitrary complex number x,
Swapping the order of the two sides of this equation and then subtracting them from Hx gives
This infinite series converges for all complex numbers x except the negative integers, which fail because trying to use the recursion relation Hn = Hn−1 + 1/n backwards through the value n = 0 involves a division by zero. By this construction, the function that defines the harmonic number for complex values is the unique function that simultaneously satisfies (1) H0 = 0, (2) Hx = Hx−1 + 1/x for all complex numbers x except the non-positive integers, and (3) limm→+∞ (Hm+x − Hm) = 0 for all complex values x.
^ ab John H., Conway; Richard K., Guy (1995). The book of numbers. Copernicus.
^Graham, Ronald L.; Knuth, Donald E.; Patashnik, Oren (1994). Concrete Mathematics. Addison-Wesley.
^Sondow, Jonathan and Weisstein, Eric W. "Harmonic Number." From MathWorld--A Wolfram Web Resource. http://mathworld.wolfram.com/HarmonicNumber.html
^Sandifer, C. Edward (2007), How Euler Did It, MAA Spectrum, Mathematical Association of America, p. 206, ISBN 9780883855638.
^Weisstein, Eric W. (2003). CRC Concise Encyclopedia of Mathematics. Boca Raton, FL: Chapman & Hall/CRC. p. 3115. ISBN 978-1-58488-347-0.
^Eisenstein, Ferdinand Gotthold Max (1850). "Eine neue Gattung zahlentheoretischer Funktionen, welche von zwei Elementen ahhängen und durch gewisse lineare Funktional-Gleichungen definirt werden". Berichte Königl. Preuβ. Akad. Wiss. Berlin. 15: 36–42.
^Boyd, David W. (1994). "A p-adic study of the partial sums of the harmonic series". Experimental Mathematics. 3 (4): 287–302. CiteSeerX 10.1.1.56.7026. doi:10.1080/10586458.1994.10504298.
^Sanna, Carlo (2016). "On the p-adic valuation of harmonic numbers" (PDF). Journal of Number Theory. 166: 41–46. doi:10.1016/j.jnt.2016.02.020. hdl:2318/1622121.
^Chen, Yong-Gao; Wu, Bing-Ling (2017). "On certain properties of harmonic numbers". Journal of Number Theory. 175: 66–86. doi:10.1016/j.jnt.2016.11.027.
^Jeffrey Lagarias (2002). "An Elementary Problem Equivalent to the Riemann Hypothesis". Amer. Math. Monthly. 109 (6): 534–543. arXiv:math.NT/0008177. doi:10.2307/2695443. JSTOR 2695443.
^E.O. Tuck (1964). "Some methods for flows past blunt slender bodies". J. Fluid Mech. 18 (4): 619–635. Bibcode:1964JFM....18..619T. doi:10.1017/S0022112064000453. S2CID 123120978.
^Sesma, J. (2017). "The Roman harmonic numbers revisited". Journal of Number Theory. 180: 544–565. doi:10.1016/j.jnt.2017.05.009. ISSN 0022-314X.
^Loeb, Daniel E; Rota, Gian-Carlo (1989). "Formal power series of logarithmic type". Advances in Mathematics. 75 (1): 1–118. doi:10.1016/0001-8708(89)90079-0. ISSN 0001-8708.
References
Arthur T. Benjamin; Gregory O. Preston; Jennifer J. Quinn (2002). "A Stirling Encounter with Harmonic Numbers" (PDF). Mathematics Magazine. 75 (2): 95–103. CiteSeerX 10.1.1.383.722. doi:10.2307/3219141. JSTOR 3219141. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2009-06-17. Retrieved 2005-08-08.
Donald Knuth (1997). "Section 1.2.7: Harmonic Numbers". The Art of Computer Programming. Vol. 1: Fundamental Algorithms (Third ed.). Addison-Wesley. pp. 75–79. ISBN 978-0-201-89683-1.
Ed Sandifer, How Euler Did It — Estimating the Basel problem Archived 2005-05-13 at the Wayback Machine (2003)
Paule, Peter; Schneider, Carsten (2003). "Computer Proofs of a New Family of Harmonic Number Identities" (PDF). Adv. Appl. Math. 31 (2): 359–378. doi:10.1016/s0196-8858(03)00016-2.
Wenchang Chu (2004). "A Binomial Coefficient Identity Associated with Beukers' Conjecture on Apery Numbers" (PDF). The Electronic Journal of Combinatorics. 11: N15. doi:10.37236/1856.
Ayhan Dil; István Mező (2008). "A Symmetric Algorithm for Hyperharmonic and Fibonacci Numbers". Applied Mathematics and Computation. 206 (2): 942–951. arXiv:0803.4388. doi:10.1016/j.amc.2008.10.013. S2CID 12130670.