The generalized Borwein conjecture. I. The Burge transform

We examine a method to conjecture two very famous identities that were conjectured by Ramanujan, and later found to be known to Rogers.

We present what we call a "motivated proof" of the Andrews-Bressoud partition identities for even moduli. A "motivated proof" of the Rogers-Ramanujan identities was given by G. E. Andrews and R. J. Baxter, and this proof was generalized to the odd-moduli case of Gordon's identities by J. Lepowsky and M. Zhu. Recently, a "motivated proof" of the somewhat analogous G\"{o}llnitz-Gordon-Andrews identities has been found. In the present work, we introduce "shelves" of formal serie...

In this article we continue a previous work in which we have generalized the Rogers Ramanujan continued fraction (RR) introducing what we call, the Ramanujan-Quantities (RQ). We use the Mathematica package to give several modular equations for certain cases of Ramanujan Quantities-(RQ). We also give the modular equations of degree 2 and 3 for the evaluation of the first derivative of Rogers-Ramanujan continued fraction. More precicely for certain classes of (RQ)'s we show how...

In a handwritten manuscript published with his lost notebook, Ramanujan stated without proofs forty identities for the Rogers-Ramanujan functions. We observe that the functions that appear in Ramanujan's identities can be obtained from a Hecke action on a certain family of eta products. We establish further Hecke-type relations for these functions involving binary quadratic forms. Our observations enable us to find new identities for the Rogers-Ramanujan functions and also to...

If a continued fraction $K_{n=1}^{\infty} a_{n}/b_{n}$ is known to converge but its limit is not easy to determine, it may be easier to use an extension of $K_{n=1}^{\infty}a_{n}/b_{n}$ to find the limit. By an extension of $K_{n=1}^{\infty} a_{n}/b_{n}$ we mean a continued fraction $K_{n=1}^{\infty} c_{n}/d_{n}$ whose odd or even part is $K_{n=1}^{\infty} a_{n}/b_{n}$. One can then possibly find the limit in one of three ways: (i) Prove the extension converges and find its...

We present a new proof of the Rogers-Ramanujan identities. Surprisingly, all its ingredients are available already in Rogers seminal paper from 1894, where he gave a considerably more complicated proof.

Using a summation formula due to Burge, and a combinatorial identity between partition pairs, we obtain an infinite tree of q-polynomial identities for the Virasoro characters \chi^{p, p'}_{r, s}, dependent on two finite size parameters M and N, in the cases where: (i) p and p' are coprime integers that satisfy 0 < p < p'. (ii) If the pair (p', p) has a continued fraction (c_1, c_2, ... , c_{t-1}, c_t+2), where t >= 1, then the pair (s, r) has a continued fraction (c_1, c...

We derive two general transformations for certain basic hypergeometric series from the recurrence formulae for the partial numerators and denominators of two $q$-continued fractions previously investigated by the authors. By then specializing certain free parameters in these transformations, and employing various identities of Rogers-Ramanujan type, we derive \emph{$m$-versions} of these identities. Some of the identities thus found are new, and some have been derived previou...

The celebrated (First) Borwein Conjecture predicts that for all positive integers~$n$ the sign pattern of the coefficients of the ``Borwein polynomial'' $$(1-q)(1-q^2)(1-q^4)(1-q^5) \cdots(1-q^{3n-2})(1-q^{3n-1})$$ is $+--+--\cdots$. It was proved by the first author in [Adv. Math. 394 (2022), Paper No. 108028]. In the present paper, we extract the essentials from the former paper and enhance them to a conceptual approach for the proof of ``Borwein-like'' sign pattern stateme...

I present and discuss an extremely simple algorithm for expanding a formal power series as a continued fraction. This algorithm, which goes back to Euler (1746) and Viscovatov (1805), deserves to be better known. I also discuss the connection of this algorithm with the work of Gauss (1812), Stieltjes (1889), Rogers (1907) and Ramanujan, and a combinatorial interpretation based on the work of Flajolet (1980).