The Riemann-Siegel formula is a formula discovered (but not published) by Riemann for computing an asymptotic formula for the Riemann-Siegel function . The formula was subsequently discovered in an archive of Riemann's papers by C. L. Siegel (Edwards 2001, p. 136; Derbyshire 2004, pp. 257 and 263) and published by Siegel in 1932.
The Riemann-Siegel formula states that
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where
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is the floor function (Edwards 2001), and is coefficient notation. The first few terms are given by
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The numerators and denominators are 1, , 1, 1, , , , 1, 19, 11, 1, , , ... (OEIS A050276) and 1, 96, 64, 18432, 64, 3840, 5308416, 128, ... (OEIS A050277), respectively.
It is based on evaluation of the integral
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also denoted , where is a line segment of slope 1, directed from upper right to lower left, which crosses the imaginary axis between 0 and (Edwards 2001, p. 147).
Another formula ascribed to Riemann and Siegel is the one presented by Riemann in his groundbreaking 1859 paper,
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where is the prime counting function, is the logarithmic integral, and is the set of such that and is a (nontrivial) zero of the Riemann zeta function . Here, the left side is the overcount of as an estimator for the prime counting function normalized by the apparent size of the error term (Borwein and Bailey 2003, p. 68).