Real Analysis – Lower Bound for a Sequence

calculuslimitsreal-analysissequences-and-seriessummation

Following my previous question, suppose that $l_1\le l_2\le \dots $ are natural numbers such that $$\sum_{i=1}^{+\infty}2^{-l_i}\le1$$I want to find a lower bound on $l_i$ in order to compute the limit $$\lim_{n\to+\infty}\frac{n}{2^{l_n}}$$ which I guess is zero but not sure about that. I think $l_i\ge i$ is a possible lower bound since $$\sum_{i=1}^{+\infty}2^{-i}=1$$ but I don't know how to show $l_i \ge i$ for all possible choices of $l_i$.

Edit: Here's a follow-up to this question.

Best Answer

Let $l_i\in {\mathbb N}$ be nondecreasing. Since $\sum 2^{-l_i}$ is bounded, one has $\lim_{i\rightarrow \infty} l_i=\infty.$ One needs to prove that $$\lim_{n\rightarrow \infty}\frac n{2^{l_n}}=0.\qquad (1)$$ One can prove a more general result:

Proposition. Let $a_n>0$ be a nondecreasing sequence such that $\sum_{n=1}^\infty \frac 1 {a_n}$ converges. Then $$\lim_{n\rightarrow \infty}\frac n{a_n}=0.$$

Proof. For every $\epsilon>0,$ there exists $N_1\in {\mathbb N}$ such that $\sum_{n>N_1}\frac 1{a_n}<\frac{\epsilon}2.$ Choose $N\geq N_1$ such that $\frac {N_1}{a_N}<\frac {\epsilon}2,$ hence $\frac {N_1}{a_n}<\frac {\epsilon}2$ for $n\geq N.$

Then if $n>N,$ one has $$\frac n{a_n}=\frac {N_1}{a_n}+\frac{n-N_1}{a_n}<\frac{\epsilon}2+\sum_{i=N_1+1}^n\frac 1 {a_i}$$ $$<\frac{\epsilon}2+\sum_{i>N_1}\frac 1 {a_i}<\frac {\epsilon}2+\frac{\epsilon}2=\epsilon.$$ This proves the proposition.

Now (1) follows by letting $a_n=2^{l_n}.$

Related Question