PRECISE TAIL ESTIMATES FOR ZETA FUNCTION-LIKE SUMS OVER

FIBONACCI NUMBERS

Author: Jae Woo Chang

Abstract. Recently, several authors considered the problem of estimating expressions of the following type

where (Fn)n0 is the classical Fibonacci sequence given by F0 = 0, F1 = 1 and Fn = Fn1+Fn2 for all n

2. Most of the previous work focused on the relatively simple case s = 1 and s = 2. In the present

paper, we find the asymptotic expansions for F1(n,s) for all 1 s 6. To give the reader an idea

how these expansions look like, we state the result in the case s = 3.

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 1
1. The Problem.

Let Fn denote the n-th term of the Fibonacci sequence defined by the initial conditions F1 = F2

= 1 and the recurrence relation Fn+2 = Fn+1 + Fn. There is a huge body of literature on Fibonacci

numbers; there are thousands of research papers dedicated to the topic. A quick internet search

with keyword Fibonacci returns close to three million links. It is therefore somewhat

surprising that there are still things we do not know about this sequence.

Recently, the following question concerning the Fibonacci sequence has been considered.

Problem 1.1. Estimate quantities of the following type

where s is a positive real number.

Ohtsuka and Nakamura [9] proved the following results.

Theorem 1.2. [9] For every n 1 we have that

, if n is odd.

Similar results were proved by Liu and Zhao [8] for the sequence {Gn}n1, the hyperfibonacci

sequence of order 1. Here, by definition . It can be easily shown that Gn = Fn+2 1

for all n 1.

Theorem 1.3. [8] (a) For every n 3 we have that

1
 .

(b) For every n 1 we have that

, if n is even

Earlier, Backstrom [1] considered the problem of estimating where a, b and c are

fixed integers. Komatsu and Laohakosol [7] consider the generalized Fibonacci sequence

instead; this is defined by the recurrence un = un1 + un2 + ... + unm, with ui 0 for all

1 i m 1. Generalizing some earlier results of the first author (see [6, 5]), Komatsu and

Laohakosol proved the following results:

Theorem 1.4. [7] For n n0, where n0 large enough the following equalities hold:

Here denotes the nearest integer function, namely x = x + 1/2 . Related problems

were considered in [2, 3, 4].

A few questions seem natural. First, all papers cited above estimate F1(n,s) (or some of its

variants) only for s = 1 and (eventually) for s = 2. It is reasonable to inquire what happens for

other values of s? Second, why stop at finding the (nearest) integer part of F1(n,s) and not try

to find a more precise expression? The goal of this project is to answer these questions.

Below we give a quick summary of our results.

Theorem 1.5.

2
 .

2. The easy cases: s = 1 and s = 2

In this section we present refined versions of Ohtsuka and Nakamuras results.

Theorem 2.1.

Proof. The theorem will follow easily from the following

Claim 2.2. For every k 4 the following inequality holds

(1) .

3
 The proof of the claim is a matter of straightforward algebraic verification. Using the iden-

tities we obtain that

whichfurthergives

0 fork 4.

This proves the right inequality in (1). For the left inequality we proceed in a similar manner.

The same identities mentioned earlier lead to

fromwhich

0 fork 4.

This completes the proof of claim 2.2. Summing now (1) over all k from n to we obtain for

every n 4 that

which immediately gives that

Theorem 2.1 follows.

Theorem 2.3.

Proof. Define , for all k 2. The proof of the theorem is a direct

consequence of the following

4
Claim 2.4. For all k 2 and bk defined above we have that

(2) .
For the right inequality we need to show that 0. Since the denominators
are all positive this is equivalent to showing that (bk+1 bk)Fk2 bk bk+1 > 0. Indeed, by using the

identities Fk+1 = Fk + Fk1 and Fk2 Fk1Fk+1 + (1)k = 0 we obtain

, that is,

(3) .

This proves the right inequality in (2). For the left inequality it suffices to prove that

.
Using (3), the left term of the above inequality can be written as

,and with this the proof of Claim 2.4 is complete.

Summing now (3) over all k from n to we obtain for every n 2 that

5
 from which .

This proves Theorem 2.3.

3. The intermediate cases: s = 3 and s = 4

In this section we prove estimates for F1(n,3) and F1(n,4). While the main approach stays

the same, the computations become more complicated. For this reason we employ the computer

algebra software MAPLE to perform and simplify some of these calculations. For completeness,

we initially decided to include an appendix containing these details. However, the paper became

longer since we wanted to also explain how we determined these expansions. In order to meet

to page limit we ended up leaving the appendix out. The interested readers can check these

computations themselves; also, a copy of this appendix can be made available upon request.

Theorem 3.1.

Proof. Let

(4) .

It is easy to check that ck > 0 for all k 1. The result stated in the theorem will be a

consequence of the following

Claim 3.2. For k 2 we have that

(5) .

Indeed, in order to prove the right inequality we need to show that

6
 As noticed earlier, the denominator of the above expression is positive so it suffices to study

only the numerator. As before, we use the identities Fk+2 = 2Fk + Fk1, Fk+1 = Fk + Fk1, Fk2 = Fk

Fk1 and to obtain a formula which depends on

Fk and Fk1 only. We skip the intermediate computations and present the final result

(6) ( 0
forallk 1,

and the right inequality in (5) is proved. For the left inequality it suffices to show that

Using (6), the left term of the above inequality can be written as

0 for all k 2.

As above, the above equality steps can be easily verified using the identities Fk+1 = Fk + Fk1

and . Likewise, the last inequality is quite straightforward. We

thus completed the proof of Claim 3.2.

Summing now (5) over all k from n to we obtain for every n 2 that

from which ,

and the proof of Theorem (3.1) is complete.

Theorem 3.3.

.
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Proof. Define

(7) .

We need the following

Claim 3.4. For k 3 we have that

(8) .

It is easy to check that for all k 1 we have that dk > 751Fk2 hence the denominators in (8) are

all positive. For the right inequality we need to show that

After bringing to the same denominator this becomes equivalent to

As noticed earlier, the denominator of the left hand side term in the inequality above is positive.

It thus suffices to prove that the numerator is positive as well. Consider the following identities:

3Fk2 + 4FkFk1 + Fk21,F2k3 = Fk21 + Fk22 = Fk2 2FkFk1 + 2Fk21, F2k1 = Fk2 + Fk21,

F2k+1 = Fk2+1 + Fk2 = 2Fk2 + 2FkFk1 + Fk21, F2k+3 = Fk2+2 + Fk2+1 = 5Fk2 + 6FkFk1 + 2Fk21.

Using these identities in conjunction with (7) and the additional identity
(1)k+1 leads to the following equality

75Fk6(75Fk2+1dk+1 1) 75Fk4Fk2+1(75Fk2dk 1) (75Fk2dk 1)(75Fk2+1dk+1 1) =

= 825Fk5Fk+1 2675Fk3Fk+1 395Fk4 + 175FkFk+1 + 285Fk2 247+

8
(9) + (1)k(750Fk6 + 750Fk3Fk+1 + 375Fk4 1190FkFk+1 749Fk2 + 47).

It is easy to notice that the dominant term in the second expression in the equality above is

Fk5(825Fk+1 (1)k750Fk) and it is positive. A quick computer check shows that the second term

in (9) is positive for all k 3. This proves the right inequality in (8).

For the left inequality in (8) we proceed in a very similar manner. The inequality to prove is

which after bringing to the same denominator becomes equivalent to

As above, focus on the numerator and use the same set of identities to simplify it. We get

75Fk6(75Fk2+1dk+1 + 1) 75Fk4Fk2+1(75Fk2dk + 1) (75Fk2dk + 1)(75Fk2+1dk+1 + 1) = =

825Fk5Fk+1 2675Fk3Fk+1 395Fk4 175FkFk+1 285Fk2 247+

+ (1)k(750Fk6 750Fk3Fk+1 375Fk4 1190FkFk+1 749Fk2 47).

Another computer check shows that the second term in the above equality is negative for all k

1. This proves the left inequality in (8) and with it the entire Claim 3.4. Summing now the

double inequality (8) for k from n to we obtain that for every n 3:

which readily implies that

.
9
To complete the proof of Theorem 3.3 all that remains to show is the following

Claim 3.5.

After eliminating the denominators the desired equality becomes equivalent to

Employing now the identities F2n+1 = Fn2+1 + Fn2 = 2Fn2 + 2FnFn1 + Fn21, F2n1 = Fn2 + Fn21

and , the above relation reduces to

1 5

(10) 4Fn (Fn1 + Fn) + 6(1)n = O (1).

2

For proving (10) we will use the closed form solution for Fn, known as Binets formula. Let

and . It is easy to check that = 1. Binets formula states that

Fn = (n n)/5. Using this formula, the left side term in (10) becomes

, as desired.

This finishes the proof of Claim 3.5 and with this, the proof of Theorem 3.3 is complete.

4. The harder cases: s = 5 and s = 6

As it can be easily seen from the stated expressions of 1(n,5) and 1(n,6), things get

significantly more complicated. Again, we employ MAPLE to perform the simplifications.

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Theorem 4.1.

(11)

Proof. Consider the following sequence

It is easy to check that ek > 1/Fk for all k 3. As in the previous proofs, we start with the

following

Claim 4.2. For every k 3 we have that

(12)

For the left inequality we need to show that

Using the identities F3k+4 = Fk3+2 + 3Fk+2Fk+1 Fk3+1, F3k+2 = Fk3+1 + 3Fk2+1Fk + Fk3, F3k+1 =

we obtain that

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A straightforward computer check shows that the right hand term of the above equality is

negative for all k 1. This proves the left inequality in (12). For proving the right inequality we

proceed in a similar manner. Using the same set of identities mentioned earlier we obtain that

As above, we can easily check that the right hand term of the above equality is positive for all k

1. This completes the proof of Claim 4.2. Summing now (12) for all k from n to we obtain

that for every n 3 the following double inequality holds.

which gives .
The proof of Theorem 4.1 is now complete.

Theorem 4.3.

(13)

Proof. Consider the following sequence

It is a straightforward matter to check that gk > 0 for all k 2. As it was the case with the earlier

results we will need to first prove the following

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Claim 4.4. For every k 3 we have that

(14) .
The left inequality is equivalent to 0. Since the denominators are all positive
this reduces to showing that (gk+1 gk)Fk6 gkgk+1 < 0. We are going to need the following

identities: ;
;
.
It is obvious that by using the identities above we should be able to express (gk+1 gk)Fk6

gkgk+1 in terms of Fk and Fk1 only. Again, we use MAPLE to perform the simplifications and we

end up with the following very simple looking result

This proves the left inequality in (14). For the right inequality we need to show that

Making use of (15) the left term of the above inequality can be written as

Here we used the (easy to check) fact that for all k 3. This proves the

right inequality in (14) and thus completes the proof of Claim 4.4. Summing now (14) for all k

from n to we obtain that for every n 3 the following double inequality holds.

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 which gives .
The proof of Theorem 4.3 is now complete.
5. How were these formulae discovered?

It is apparent that the expansion of F1(n,s) becomes more complicated as the values of s get

higher. We believe it would be interesting to say a few words about how we found these

expressions. Since the process is the same in all the cases we will present the details for the case

s = 4 only.

First, let us introduce two notations. Let xn and yn be two sequences of nonzero terms. If

, where k is a finite positive constant then we write xn yn. If additionally we

have k = 1 then we write xn yn.

It can be easily shown that for every s > 0 we have that where

b = (1 5)/2. It follows that the leading term in the expansion of F1(n,4) can be chosen to be

(1 b4)Fn4. However, we seek a nicer leading term, preferably one which has rational

coefficients only. The reason is not purely aesthetic: we want to be able to use various identities

involving Fibonacci numbers in performing certain calculations; if the coefficients are rational

we have a much better chance to obtain simpler final expressions. Let a = (1 + 5)/2 and

recall that Fn = (an bn)/5 that is, Fn an/5. Notice that a + b = 1, a b = 5 and ab = 1. Then

we have

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So rather than using (1 as the leading term in the expansion of F1(n,4) we use

instead. Next we look at the difference F1(n,4)F2n2Fn2. Computer experimentations suggest

that F1(n,4)F2n2Fn2 (1)nFn2. We then construct a sequence xk := F2k2Fk2 +c(1)kFk2 so that

is close to 1/Fk4 (in a sense to be made precise a bit later). The reason behind this

choice is that we intend to obtain a double inequality similar to (8) from which we can later

derive a telescopic sum.

Compute for the above choice of xk. After expressing

everything in terms of Fk and Fk1 via the identities F2k = 2FkFk1+Fk2, F2k2 = 2Fk1Fk2+

and we obtain

(xk+1xk)Fk4xk xk+1 = (1)k [(6c + 4)Fk4 + (2c 4)Fk3Fk1 + c c2]+(3+4c2c2)Fk2(2+c2)FkFk1.

As mentioned earlier, we want the left hand term of the above equality to be small. This

roughly means that the terms of highest degree in the right hand term cancel out, that is,

lim (6c + 4)F4 + (2c 4)F3F n k k k1 = 0 which gives.

At this point we have . But again, we would like to avoid the

irrational coefficients so we will try to modify the second term in the expression of xk.

This is done as follows:

Hence, the upgraded expression of xk is 2( 1)k

2
(16) xk = F2k2Fk 5 F2k3.

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Now look again at the difference F1(n,4)xn. Computer data suggests that 1(n,4)xn c where

c is about 0.2596.... To find the exact value of c we proceed in a manner similar to the one above.

Let yk = xk + c = F2k2Fk2 2(51)kF2k3 + c. As before, we expect to be

close to 1/Fk4 for the correct value of c. To this end express the numerator of in

terms of Fk and Fk1 only; of course, we will need to use the appropriate identities. Here is what

we obtain:

(yk+1 yk)Fk4 yk yk+1 =(75c 25)Fk4 + (150c 30)Fk3Fk1 + (25c2 10c 8)+

+ (1)k [(40c 34)Fk2 + (80c 16)FkFk1].

Again, we want the term of highest order to vanish in the limit, that is, lim (75c

25)F4 + (150c 30)F3F n k k

k1 = 0 which gives.

It follows that 1(n,4) yn 0 when n where .

Compare this with the statement in Theorem 3.3.

This describes our approach for estimating F1(n,4). Similar techniques were used for the

other cases. In principle, for a given s this process can be carried out for as many steps as one

wishes. For instance, we present stronger versions of the results proved above. The proofs use

the same ideas presented earlier; of course, the computations are going to be more complicated

but for the most part this is not an issue as we can use MAPLE to perform these calculations.

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 .

A general expansion formula for F1(n,s) is highly desirable. However, the equalities in the

theorem above shed very little light on how such a formula may look like. If there is a pattern to

be discovered, it still eludes us. It may be that rewriting these equalities in terms of powers of

Fn only may be useful. But if we do that the coefficients are going to be irrational. Recall that our

main concern was to obtain expansions with rational coefficients; this way, we had an easier

time proving the claims.

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 References

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Fibonacci Quarterly 19 (1981), 1421.

[2] N. N. Cao and F. Z. Zhao, Some properties of hyperfibonacci and hyperlucas Numbers, J. Integer Sequences 13

(2010), article 10.8.8, 11pp.

[3] C. Elsner, S. Shimomura and I. Shiokawa, Algebraic relations for reciprocal sums of Fibonacci numbers, Acta

Arithmetica 130 (2007), 3760.

[4] C. Elsner, S. Shimomura and I. Shiokawa, Algebraic relations for reciprocal sums of odd terms in Fibonacci

numbers, Ramanujan Journal 17 (2008), 429446.

[5] S. H. Holliday and T. Komatsu, On the sum of reciprocal generalized Fibonacci numbers, Integers 11A

(2011).

[6] T. Komatsu, On the sum of reciprocal sums of tribonacci numbers, Ars Combinatoria 98 (2011), 447459.

[7] T. Komatsu and V. Laohakosol, On the sum of reciprocals of numbers satisfying a recurrence relation of order

s. J. Integer Sequences 13 (2010), no. 5, Article 10.5.8, 9 pp.

[8] R. Liu and F. Z. Zhao, On the sums of reciprocal hyperfibonacci numbers and hyperlucas numbers, Journal of

Integer Sequences 15 (2012), article 12.4.5, 10 pages.

[9] H. Ohtsuka and S. Nakamura, On the sum of reciprocal sums of Fibonacci numbers, Fibonacci Quarterly

46/47 (2008/2009), 153159.