Convergence acceleration of series through a variational approach September 30, 2004 Paolo Amore∗, Facultad de Ciencias, Universidad de Colima, Bernal D´ıaz del Castillo 340, Colima, Colima, M´exico Abstract By means of a variational approach we find new series representa- tions both for well known mathematical constants, such as π and the Catalan constant, and for mathematical functions, such as the Rie- mann zeta function. The series that we have found are all exponen- tially convergent and provide quite useful analytical approximations. With limited effort our method can be applied to obtain similar expo- nentially convergent series for a large class of mathematical functions. 1 Introduction This paper deals with the problem of improving the convergence of a series in the case where the series itself is converging very slowly and a large number of terms needs to be evaluated to reach the desired accuracy. This is an interesting and challenging problem, which has been considered by many authors before (see, for example, [FV 1996, Br 1999, Co 2000]). In this paper we wish to attack this problem, although aiming from a different angle: instead of looking for series expansions in some small nat- ural parameter (i.e. a parameter present in the original formula), we in- troduce an artificial dependence in the formulas upon an (not completely) ∗
[email protected] 1 arbitrary parameter and then devise an expansion which can be optimized to give faster rates of convergence. The details of how this work will be explained in depth in the next section. This procedure is well known in Physics and it has been exploited in the so-called \Linear Delta Expansion" (LDE) and similar approaches [AFC 1990, Jo 1995, Fe 2000].