Truncated Theta Series Related to the Jacobi Triple Product Identity

Abstract

The work of Andrews and Merca on the truncated Euler's pentagonal number theorem led to a resurgence in research on truncated theta series identities. In particular, Yee proved a truncated version of the Jacobi Triple Product (JTP) identity. Recently, Merca conjectured a stronger form of the truncated JTP identity. In this article we prove the first three cases of the conjecture and several related truncated identities. We prove combinatorially an identity related to the JTP identity which in particular cases reduces to identities conjectured by Merca and proved analytically by Krattenthaler, Merca and Radu. Moreover, we introduce a new combinatorial interpretation for the number of distinct 5-regular partitions of n.