An Invitation to Q-series

Book excerpt: The aim of this lecture notes is to provide a self-contained exposition of several fascinating formulas discovered by Srinivasa Ramanujan. Two central results in these notes are: (1) the evaluation of the Rogers–Ramanujan continued fraction — a result that convinced G H Hardy that Ramanujan was a “mathematician of the highest class”, and (2) what G H Hardy called Ramanujan's “Most Beautiful Identity”. This book covers a range of related results, such as several proofs of the famous Rogers–Ramanujan identities and a detailed account of Ramanujan's congruences. It also covers a range of techniques in q-series.