Algorithms for the indefinite and definite summation

Abstract

The celebrated Zeilberger algorithm which finds holonomic recurrence equations for definite sums of hypergeometric terms $F(n,k)$ is extended to certain nonhypergeometric terms. An expression $F(n,k)$ is called a hypergeometric term if both $F(n+1,k)/F(n,k)$ and $F(n,k+1)/F(n,k)$ are rational functions. Typical examples are ratios of products of exponentials, factorials, $Γ$ function terms, bin omial coefficients, and Pochhammer symbols that are integer-linear with respect to $n$ and $k$ in their arguments. We consider the more general case of ratios of products of exponentials, factorials, $Γ$ function terms, binomial coefficients, and Pochhammer symbols that are rational-linear with respect to $n$ and $k$ in their arguments, and present an extended version of Zeilberger's algorithm for this case, using an extended version of Gosper's algorithm for indefinite summation. In a similar way the Wilf-Zeilberger method of rational function certification of integer-linear hypergeometric identities is extended to rational-linear hypergeometric identities.