m-Fold Hypergeometric Solutions of Linear Recurrence Equations Revisited

We present two algorithms to compute m-fold hypergeometric solutions of linear recurrence equations for the classical shift case and for the q-case, respectively. The first is an m-fold generalization and q-generalization of the algorithm by van Hoeij (Appl Algebra Eng Commun Comput 17:83–115, 2005; J. Pure Appl Algebra 139:109–131, 1998) for recurrence equations. The second is a combination of an improved version of the algorithms by Petkovšek (Discrete Math 180:3–22, 1998; J Symb Comput 14(2–3):243–264, 1992) for recurrence and q-recurrence equations and the m-fold algorithm from Petkovšek and Salvy (ISSAC 1993 Proceedings, pp 27–33, 1993) for recurrence equations. We will refer to the classical algorithms as van Hoeij or Petkovšek respectively. To formulate our ideas, we first need to introduce an adapted version of an m-fold Newton polygon and its characteristic polynomials for the classical case and q-case, and to prove the important properties in this case. Using the data from the Newton polygon, we are able to present efficient m-fold versions of the van Hoeij and Petkovšek algorithms for the classical shift case and for the q-case, respectively. Furthermore, we show how one can use the Newton polygon and our characteristic polynomials to conclude for which $${m\in \mathbb{N}}$$ there might be an m-fold hypergeometric solution at all. Again by using the information obtained from the Newton polygon, the presentation of the q-Petkovšek algorithm can be simplified and streamlined. Finally, we give timings for the ‘classical’ q-Petkovšek, our q-van Hoeij and our modified q-Petkovšek algorithm on some classes of problems and we present a Maple implementation of the m-fold algorithms for the q-case.