Power series with “shifted” central binomial coefficients

binomial-coefficientspower series

During a tedious calculation, I arrived at a power series of the form which I want to compute:

$$ \sum\limits_{n=m}^\infty r^{2n} \binom{2n}{n-m} $$

But from the search I so far did in other threads, I saw only ad-hoc methods whose conditions I don't think suit here. My current attempts have not been fruitful, but I hope someone would perhaps nudge me in the right direction on how to deal with this.

Best Answer

We find in H. Wilf's Generatingfunctionology formula (2.5.15) providing a generating function of the shifted central binomial coefficients in the form \begin{align*} \frac{1}{\sqrt{1-4x}}\left(\frac{1-\sqrt{1-4x}}{2x}\right)^k=\sum_{n}\binom{2n+k}{n}x^n\tag{1} \end{align*}

We can adapt (1) easily and obtain \begin{align*} \color{blue}{\sum\limits_{n=m}^\infty}&\color{blue}{ \binom{2n}{n-m}r^{2n}}\\ &=\sum_{n=0}^\infty\binom{2n+2m}{n}r^{2n+2m}\\ &=r^{2m}\sum_{n=0}^\infty\binom{2n+2m}{n}\left(r^2\right)^n\\ &\,\,\color{blue}{=\frac{1}{\sqrt{1-4r^2}}\left(\frac{1-\sqrt{1-4r^2}}{2r}\right)^{2m}} \end{align*}

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