# Abel–Plana formula

In mathematics, the Abel–Plana formula is a summation formula discovered independently by Niels Henrik Abel (1823) and Giovanni Antonio Amedeo Plana (1820). It states that

${\displaystyle \sum _{n=0}^{\infty }f(n)=\int _{0}^{\infty }f(x)\,dx+{\frac {1}{2}}f(0)+i\int _{0}^{\infty }{\frac {f(it)-f(-it)}{e^{2\pi t}-1}}\,dt.}$

It holds for functions f that are holomorphic in the region Re(z) ≥ 0, and satisfy a suitable growth condition in this region; for example it is enough to assume that |f| is bounded by C/|z|1+ε in this region for some constants C, ε > 0, though the formula also holds under much weaker bounds. (Olver 1997, p.290).

An example is provided by the Hurwitz zeta function,

${\displaystyle \zeta (s,\alpha )=\sum _{n=0}^{\infty }{\frac {1}{(n+\alpha )^{s}}}={\frac {\alpha ^{1-s}}{s-1}}+{\frac {1}{2\alpha ^{s}}}+2\int _{0}^{\infty }{\frac {\sin \left(s\arctan {\frac {t}{\alpha }}\right)}{(\alpha ^{2}+t^{2})^{\frac {s}{2}}}}{\frac {dt}{e^{2\pi t}-1}},}$

which holds for all s, s ≠ 1.

Abel also gave the following variation for alternating sums:

${\displaystyle \sum _{n=0}^{\infty }(-1)^{n}f(n)={\frac {1}{2}}f(0)+i\int _{0}^{\infty }{\frac {f(it)-f(-it)}{2\sinh(\pi t)}}\,dt.}$