Bilateral identities of the Rogers-Ramanujan type

Abstract

We derive by analytic means a number of bilateral identities of the Rogers-Ramanujan type. Our results include bilateral extensions of the Rogers-Ramanujan and the G\"ollnitz-Gordon identities, and of related identities by Ramanujan, Jackson, and Slater. We give corresponding results for multiseries including multilateral extensions of the Andrews-Gordon identities, of Bressoud's even modulus identities, and other identities. The here revealed closed form bilateral and multilateral summations appear to be the very first of their kind. Given that the classical Rogers-Ramanujan identities have well-established connections to various areas in mathematics and in physics, it is natural to expect that the new bilateral and multilateral identities can be similarly connected to those areas. This is supported by concrete combinatorial interpretations for a collection of four bilateral companions to the classical Rogers-Ramanujan identities.Comment: 25 page