The Riemann-Siegel formula is a formula discovered (but not published) by Riemann for computing an asymptotic formula for the Riemann-Siegel
function .
The formula was subsequently discovered in an archive of Riemann's papers by C. L. Siegel
(Edwards 2001, p. 136; Derbyshire 2004, pp. 257 and 263) and published
by Siegel in 1932.
The Riemann-Siegel formula states that
(1)
|
where
(2)
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(3)
| |||
(4)
| |||
(5)
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(6)
| |||
(7)
|
is the floor function (Edwards 2001), and
is coefficient notation. The first few terms
are given by
(8)
| |||
(9)
| |||
(10)
| |||
(11)
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(12)
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(13)
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The numerators and denominators are 1, , 1, 1,
,
,
, 1, 19, 11, 1,
,
, ... (OEIS A050276)
and 1, 96, 64, 18432, 64, 3840, 5308416, 128, ... (OEIS A050277),
respectively.
It is based on evaluation of the integral
(14)
| |||
(15)
|
also denoted ,
where
is a line segment of slope 1, directed from upper right to lower left, which crosses
the imaginary axis between 0 and
(Edwards 2001, p. 147).
Another formula ascribed to Riemann and Siegel is the one presented by Riemann in his groundbreaking 1859 paper,
(16)
|
where
is the prime counting function,
is the logarithmic
integral, and
is the set of
such that
and
is a (nontrivial) zero of the Riemann
zeta function
. Here, the left side is the overcount of
as an estimator for the prime
counting function normalized by the apparent size of the error term (Borwein
and Bailey 2003, p. 68).