Shifted sums of the Bernoulli numbers, reciprocity, and denominators

Abstract

We consider the numbers Br,s = (B + 1)r Bs (in umbral notation Bn = Bn with the Bernoulli numbers) that have a well-known reciprocity relation, which is frequently found in the literature and goes back to the 19th century. In a recent paper, self-reciprocal Bernoulli polynomials, whose coefficients are related to these numbers, appeared in the context of power sums and the so-called Faulhaber polynomials. The numbers Br,s can be recursively expressed by iterated sums and differences, so it is not obvious that these numbers do not vanish in general. As a main result among other properties, we show the non-vanishing of these numbers, apart from exceptional cases. We further derive an explicit product formula for their denominators, which follows from a von Staudt–Clausen type relation.

Keywords

• bernoulli number and polynomial
• shifted sum
• reciprocity relation
• denominator