MOTIVATION. After having read in detail an article by Alf van der Poorten I read a very short paper by Roger Apéry. I am interested in finding a proof of a series expansion in the latter, which is in not given in it. So I assumed it should be stated or derived from a theorem on the subject.
In Apéry, R., Irrationalité de $\zeta 2$ et $\zeta 3$, Société Mathématique de France, Astérisque 61 (1979) there is a divergent series expansion for a function I would like to understand. Here is my translation of the relevant part for this question
(...) given a real sequence $a_{1},a_{2},\ldots ,a_{k}$, an analytic function $f\left( x\right) $ with respect to the variable $\frac{1}{x}$ tending to $0$ with $\frac{1}{x}$ admits a (unique) expansion in the form $f\left( x\right) \equiv \sum_{k\geq 1}\frac{c_{k}}{\left( x+a_{1}\right) \left( x+a_{2}\right) \ldots \left( x+a_{k}\right) }.\tag{A}$
Added copy of the original:
and the translation by Generic Human of the text after the formula:
"(We write ≡ instead of = to take into account the aversions of mathematicians who, following Abel, Cauchy and d'Alembert, hold divergent series to be an invention of the devil; in fact, we only ever use a finite sum of terms, but the number of terms is an unbounded function of x.)"
Remark. As far as I understand, based on this last text, the expansion of $f(x)$ in $(\mathrm{A})$ is in general a divergent series and not a convergent one, but the existing answer [by WimC] seems to indicate the opposite.
The corresponding finite sum appears and is proved in section 3 of Alfred van der Poorten's article A proof that Euler missed ... Apéry's proof of the irrationality of $\zeta (3)$ as
For all $a_{1}$, $a_{2}$, $\dots$ $ \sum_{k=1}^{K}\frac{a_{1}a_{2}\cdots a_{k-1}}{(x+a_{1})(x+a_{2})\cdots(x+a_{k})}= \frac{1}{x}-\frac{a_{1}a_{2}\cdots a_{K}}{x(x+a_{1})(x+a_{2})\cdots(x+a_{K})},$ $\tag{A'} $
Questions:
- Is series $(A)$ indeed divergent?
- Which is the theorem stating or from which expansion $(\mathrm{A})$ can be derived?
- Could you please indicate a reference?
I've posted on MathOverflow a variant of this question.