Research Articles

Pramana

, Volume 66, Issue 3, pp 485-494

First online:

Gentile statistics and restricted partitions

  • C. S. SrivatsanAffiliated withDepartment of Physics, Indian Institute of Technology
  • , M. V. N. MurthyAffiliated withThe Institute of Mathematical Sciences
  • , R. K. BhaduriAffiliated withDepartment of Physics, McMaster University

Abstract

In a recent paper (Tranet al, Ann. Phys.311, 204 (2004)), some asymptotic number theoretical results on the partitioning of an integer were derived exploiting its connection to the quantum density of states of a many-particle system. We generalise these results to obtain an asymptotic formula for therestricted or coloured partitionsp k s (n), which is the number of partitions of an integern into the summand of sth powers of integers such that each power of a given integer may occur utmostk times. While the method is not rigorous, it reproduces the well-known asymptotic results fors = 1 apart from yielding more general results for arbitrary values ofs.

Keywords

Restricted partitions colour partitions quantum density of states Gentile statistics