Regularly spaced subsums of integer partitions

E. Rodney Canfield, Carla D. Savage, Herbert S. Wilf

Published 2003-08-07Version 1

For integer partitions $\lambda :n=a_1+...+a_k$, where $a_1\ge a_2\ge >...\ge a_k\ge 1$, we study the sum $a_1+a_3+...$ of the parts of odd index. We show that the average of this sum, over all partitions $\lambda$ of $n$, is of the form $n/2+(\sqrt{6}/(8\pi))\sqrt{n}\log{n}+c_{2,1}\sqrt{n}+O(\log{n}).$ More generally, we study the sum $a_i+a_{m+i}+a_{2m+i}+...$ of the parts whose indices lie in a given arithmetic progression and we show that the average of this sum, over all partitions of $n$, is of the form $n/m+b_{m,i}\sqrt{n}\log{n}+c_{m,i}\sqrt{n}+O(\log{n})$, with explicitly given constants $b_{m,i},c_{m,i}$. Interestingly, for $m$ odd and $i=(m+1)/2$ we have $b_{m,i}=0$, so in this case the error term is of lower order. The methods used involve asymptotic formulas for the behavior of Lambert series and the Zeta function of Hurwitz. We also show that if $f(n,j)$ is the number of partitions of $n$ the sum of whose parts of even index is $j$, then for every $n$, $f(n,j)$ agrees with a certain universal sequence, Sloane's sequence \texttt{#A000712}, for $j\le n/3$ but not for any larger $j$.