This book is aimed at two kinds of readers: firstly, people working in or near mathematics, who are curious about continued fractions; and secondly, senior or graduate students who would like an extensive introduction to the analytic theory of continued fractions. The book contains several recent results and new angles of approach and thus should be of interest to researchers throughout the field. The first five chapters contain an introduction to the basic theory, while the last seven chapters present a variety of applications. Finally, an appendix presents a large number of special continued fraction expansions. This very readable book also contains many valuable examples and problems.

Special functions are pervasive in all fields of science and industry. The most well-known application areas are in physics, engineering, chemistry, computer science and statistics. Because of their importance, several books and websites (see for instance http: functions.wolfram.com) and a large collection of papers have been devoted to these functions. Of the standard work on the subject, the Handbook of mathematical functions with formulas, graphs and mathematical tables edited by Milton Abramowitz and Irene Stegun, the American National Institute of Standards claims to have sold over 700 000 copies! But so far no project has been devoted to the systematic study of continued fraction representations for these functions. This handbook is the result of such an endeavour. We emphasise that only 10% of the continued fractions contained in this book, can also be found in the Abramowitz and Stegun project or at the Wolfram website!

This book presents the arithmetic and metrical theory of regular continued fractions and is intended to be a modern version of A. Ya. Khintchine's classic of the same title. Besides new and simpler proofs for many of the standard topics, numerous numerical examples and applications are included (the continued fraction of e, Ostrowski representations and t-expansions, period lengths of quadratic surds, the general Pell's equation, homogeneous and inhomogeneous diophantine approximation, Hall's theorem, the Lagrange and Markov spectra, asymmetric approximation, etc). Suitable for upper level undergraduate and beginning graduate students, the presentation is self-contained and the metrical results are developed as strong laws of large numbers.

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This volume presents the contributions from the international conference held at the University of Missouri at Columbia, marking Professor Lange's 70th birthday and his retirement from the university. The principal purpose of the conference was to focus on continued fractions as a common interdisciplinary theme bridging gaps between a large number of fields-from pure mathematics to mathematical physics and approximation theory. Evident in this work is the widespread influence of continued fractions in a broad range of areas of mathematics and physics, including number theory, elliptic functions, Padé approximations, orthogonal polynomials, moment problems, frequency analysis, and regularity properties of evolution equations. Different areas of current research are represented. The lectures at the conference and the contributions to this volume reflect the wide range of applicability of continued fractions in mathematics and the applied sciences.

Continued Fractions consists of two volumes — Volume 1: Convergence Theory; and Volume 2: Representation of Functions (tentative title), which is expected in 2011. Volume 1 is dedicated to the convergence and computation of continued fractions, while Volume 2 will treat representations of meromorphic functions by continued fractions. Taken together, the two volumes will present the basic continued fractions theory without requiring too much previous knowledge; some basic knowledge of complex functions will suffice. Both new and advanced graduate students of continued fractions shall get a comprehensive understanding of how these infinite structures work in a number of applications, and why they work so well. A varied buffet of possible applications to whet the appetite is presented first, before the more basic but modernized theory is given. This new edition is the result of an increasing interest in computing special functions by means of continued fractions. The methods described in detail are, in many cases, very simple, yet reliable and efficient.