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Two cases arise: The first case is theoretical: when you know all the coefficients then you take certain limits and find the precise radius of convergence.; The second case is practical: when you construct a power series solution of a difficult problem you typically will only know a finite number of terms in a power series, anywhere from a couple of terms to a hundred terms.
Consider the formal power series in one complex variable z of the form = = where ,.. Then the radius of convergence of f at the point a is given by = (| | /) where lim sup denotes the limit superior, the limit as n approaches infinity of the supremum of the sequence values after the nth position.
The utility of Abel's theorem is that it allows us to find the limit of a power series as its argument (that is, ) approaches from below, even in cases where the radius of convergence, , of the power series is equal to and we cannot be sure whether the limit should be finite or not.
For instance it is not true that if two power series = and = have the same radius of convergence, then = (+) also has this radius of convergence: if = and = + (), for instance, then both series have the same radius of convergence of 1, but the series = (+) = = has a radius of convergence of 3.
That theorem has its main interest in the case that the power series has radius of convergence exactly 1: if the radius of convergence is greater than one, the convergence of the power series is uniform for r in [0,1] so that the sum is automatically continuous and it follows directly that the limit as r tends up to 1 is simply the sum of the a n.
In mathematics, the power series method is used to seek a power series solution to certain differential equations. In general, such a solution assumes a power series with unknown coefficients, then substitutes that solution into the differential equation to find a recurrence relation for the coefficients.
Abel's uniform convergence test is a criterion for the uniform convergence of a series of functions or an improper integration of functions dependent on parameters. It is related to Abel's test for the convergence of an ordinary series of real numbers, and the proof relies on the same technique of summation by parts. The test is as follows.
Note that sometimes a series like this is called a power series "around p", because the radius of convergence is the radius R of the largest interval or disc centred at p such that the series will converge for all points z strictly in the interior (convergence on the boundary of the interval or disc generally has to be checked separately).