Extending harmonic numbers
For a positive integer n, the nth harmonic number is defined to be the sum of the reciprocals of the first n positive integers:
How might we extend this definition so that n does not have to be a positive integer?
First approachOne way to extend harmonic numbers is as follows. Start with the equation
Then
Integrate both sides from 0 to 1.
So when x is an integer,
is a theorem. When x is not an integer, we take this as a definition.
Second approachAnother approach is to start with the identity
then take the logarithm and derivative of both sides. This gives
where the digamma function is defined to be the derivative of the log of the gamma function.
If x is an integer and we apply the identity above repeatedly we get
where is Euler's constant. Then we can define
for general values of x.
Are they equal?We've shown two ways of extending the harmonic numbers. Are these two different extensions or are they equal? They are in fact equal, which follows from equation 12.16 in Whittaker and Watson, citing a theorem of Legendre.
Taking either approach as our definition we could, for example, compute the th harmonic number (1.87274) or even the ith harmonic number (0.671866 + 1.07667i).
An addition ruleThe digamma function satisfies an addition rule
which can be proved by taking the logarithm and derivative of Gauss's multiplication rule for the gamma function.
Let z = x + 1/2 and add to both sizes. This shows that harmonic numbers satisfy the addition rule
