Rearrangement of series and consequences of Riemann's Theorem.

436 Views Asked by At

I've been struggling with the following exercise. We're doing the consequences of Riemann's theorem for series, and I've proved that a rearrangement of a serie can diverge to $-\infty$ and $+\infty$, but I don't know how to deal with this problem.

Let $\sum a_n$ be a conditionally convergent series (that is, convergent, but not absolutely convergent). Let $a<b$ be real numbers. Prove that exists a rearrangement and two sequences $N_k$ and $M_k$ such that $$\sum_{n=1}^{N_k} a_{\sigma(n)}<a$$ and $$\sum_{n=1}^{M_k} a_{\sigma(n)}>b,$$ when $k\to \infty$.

Any hint will be appreciated. Thanks.

1

There are 1 best solutions below

1
On BEST ANSWER

Here is a sketch:

Observation: since $\sum a_n$ is conditionally convergent, it's not hard to prove that the derived series $\sum a^+_n$ and $\sum a^{^{-}}_n$ both diverge.

Now, to begin, add, in order, just enough of the first positive terms of $\sum a_n$ so that their sum is greater than $b$. This is possible by the observation. Then we will need $M_1$ terms of $\sum a_n$ to do this. Therefore, the first partial sum of our rearrangment is $S_{M_{1}}=\sum_{n=1}^{M_1} a_{\sigma(n)}>b$.

Now, to $S_1$, add just enough negative terms from the original series so that the sum is less than $a$. We will need a total of $N_1$ terms of the original series to do this. Therefore, the first partial sum here is $S_{N_{1}}=\sum_{n=1}^{N_1} a_{\sigma(n)}<a$.

Now proceed inductively: having chosen $M_k$ and $N_k$ such that $S_{M_{k}}=\sum_{n=1}^{M_k} a_{\sigma(n)}>b$ and $S_{N_{k}}=\sum_{n=1}^{N_k} a_{\sigma(n)}<a,\ $ to $S_{N_{k}}$ we add just enough positive terms from the original series, so that $S_{M_{k+1}}=\sum_{n=1}^{M_{k+1}} a_{\sigma(n)}>b$, and to this series just enough negative terms so that $S_{N_{k+1}}=\sum_{n=1}^{N_{k+1}} a_{\sigma(n)}<a$.

By construction, these series satisfy the requirements of the exercise.

The point of this is that the sequence of partial sums $S_k=\left \{ S_{M_1},S_{N_1},\cdots , S_{M_k},S_{N_k}\right \}_{k\geq 1}$ is a rearrangement of the original series such that $\limsup S_k=b$ and $\liminf S_k=a$.