FOUR IDENTITIES FOR THIRD ORDER MOCK THETA FUNCTIONS

Abstract

In 2005, using a famous lemma of Atkin and Swinnerton-Dyer (Some properties of partitions, Proc. Lond. Math. Soc. (3) 4 (1954), 84–106), Yesilyurt (Four identities related to third order mock theta functions in Ramanujan’s lost notebook, Adv. Math. 190 (2005), 278–299) proved four identities for third order mock theta functions found on pages 2 and 17 in Ramanujan’s lost notebook. The primary purpose of this paper is to offer new proofs in the spirit of what Ramanujan might have given in the hope that a better understanding of the identities might be gained. Third order mock theta functions are intimately connected with ranks of partitions. We prove new dissections for two rank generating functions, which are keys to our proof of the fourth, and the most difficult, of Ramanujan’s identities. In the last section of this paper, we establish new relations for ranks arising from our dissections of rank generating functions.