In complex analysis, a partial fraction expansion is a way of writing a meromorphic function f(z) as an infinite sum of rational functions and polynomials. When f(z) is a rational function, this reduces to the usual method of partial fractions.

Motivation

By using polynomial long division and the partial fraction technique from algebra, any rational function can be written as a sum of terms of the form, where a and b are complex, k is an integer, and p(z) is a polynomial. Just as polynomial factorization can be generalized to the Weierstrass factorization theorem, there is an analogy to partial fraction expansions for certain meromorphic functions. A proper rational function (one for which the degree of the denominator is greater than the degree of the numerator) has a partial fraction expansion with no polynomial terms. Similarly, a meromorphic function f(z) for which |f(z)| goes to 0 as z goes to infinity at least as quickly as has an expansion with no polynomial terms.

Calculation

Let f(z) be a function meromorphic in the finite complex plane with poles at and let be a sequence of simple closed curves such that: Suppose also that there exists an integer p such that Writing for the principal part of the Laurent expansion of f about the point \lambda_k, we have if p = -1. If p > -1, then where the coefficients c_{j,k} are given by \lambda_0 should be set to 0, because even if f(z) itself does not have a pole at 0, the residues of at z = 0 must still be included in the sum. Note that in the case of, we can use the Laurent expansion of f(z) about the origin to get so that the polynomial terms contributed are exactly the regular part of the Laurent series up to z^p. For the other poles \lambda_k where k \ge 1, can be pulled out of the residue calculations:

Example

The simplest meromorphic functions with an infinite number of poles are the non-entire trigonometric functions. As an example, \tan(z) is meromorphic with poles at, The contours \Gamma_k will be squares with vertices at traversed counterclockwise, k > 1, which are easily seen to satisfy the necessary conditions. On the horizontal sides of \Gamma_k, so for all real x, which yields For x > 0, \coth(x) is continuous, decreasing, and bounded below by 1, so it follows that on the horizontal sides of \Gamma_k,. Similarly, it can be shown that on the vertical sides of \Gamma_k. With this bound on |\tan(z)| we can see that That is, the maximum of on \Gamma_k occurs at the minimum of |z|, which is k\pi. Therefore p = 0, and the partial fraction expansion of \tan(z) looks like The principal parts and residues are easy enough to calculate, as all the poles of \tan(z) are simple and have residue -1: We can ignore, since both \tan(z) and are analytic at 0, so there is no contribution to the sum, and ordering the poles \lambda_k so that , etc., gives

Applications

Infinite products

Because the partial fraction expansion often yields sums of, it can be useful in finding a way to write a function as an infinite product; integrating both sides gives a sum of logarithms, and exponentiating gives the desired product: Applying some logarithm rules, which finally gives

Laurent series

The partial fraction expansion for a function can also be used to find a Laurent series for it by simply replacing the rational functions in the sum with their Laurent series, which are often not difficult to write in closed form. This can also lead to interesting identities if a Laurent series is already known. Recall that We can expand the summand using a geometric series: Substituting back, which shows that the coefficients a_n in the Laurent (Taylor) series of \tan(z) about z = 0 are where T_n are the tangent numbers. Conversely, we can compare this formula to the Taylor expansion for \tan(z) about z = 0 to calculate the infinite sums: