On Ramanujan Sums of a Real Variable and a New Ramanujan Expansion for the Divisor Function

Abstract

We show that the absolute convergence of a Ramanujan expansion does not guarantee the convergence of its real variable generalization, which is obtained by replacing the integer argument in the Ramanujan sums with a real number. We also construct a new Ramanujan expansion for the divisor function. While our expansion is amenable to a continuous and absolutely convergent real variable generalization, it only interpolates the divisor function locally on $\mathbb{R}$.