Enumeration of Partitions: The Role of Eulerian Series and q-Orthogonal Polynomials

The theory of partitions has long been associated with so called basic hypergeometric functions or Eulerian series. We begin with discussion of some of the lesser known identities of L.J. Rogers which have interesting interpretations in the theory of partitions. Illustrations are given for the numerous ways partition studies lead to Eulerian series. The main portion of our work is primarily an introduction to recent work on orthogonal polynomials defined by basic hypergeometric series and to the applications that can be made of these results to the theory of partitions. Perhaps it is most interesting to note that we deduce the Rogers-Ramanujan identities from our solution to the connection coefficient problem for the little q-Jacobi polynomials.

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