Search

Most of the known continued fraction expansions of special functions are limit periodic. This means that the classical approximants S n (0) are normally not the best ones to use for approximations. In this paper we suggest a number of approximants S n (w n ) which converge faster. The estimation of the improvement and bounds for the error |f - Sn(wn)| (which we still call the truncation error) are mainly obtained by means of Thron's parabola sequence theorem and the oval sequence theorem.

Even and odd parts of limit periodic continued fractions K( a n /1), a n → a are again limit periodic in most cases. For a = ∞ additional conditions are needed; the particular ones used in the paper imply that the even and odd parts K( c n /1) and K( d n /1) are such that c n → − 1 4 and d n → − 1 4 . Illustrating examples are included.

For integers $m \geq 2$, we study divergent continued fractions whose numerators and denominators in each of the $m$ arithmetic progressions modulo $m$ converge. Special cases give, among other things, an infinite sequence of divergence theorems, the first of which is the classical Stern-Stolz theorem. We give a theorem on a general class of Poincar{\'e} type recurrences which shows that they tend to limits when the limits are taken in residue classes and the roots of their characteristic polynomials are distinct roots of unity. We also generalize a curious $q$-continued fraction of Ramanujan's with three limits to a continued fraction with $k$ distinct limit points, $k\geq 2$. The $k$ limits are evaluated in terms of ratios of certain unusual $q$ series. Finally, we show how to use Daniel Bernoulli's continued fraction in an elementary way to create analytic continued fractions with $m$ limit points, for any positive integer $m \geq 2$., Comment: 29 pages. Updated/new content