The ideal test for the divergence of a series

Abstract

We generalize the classical Olivier’s theorem which says that for any convergent series sum _n a_n with positive nonincreasing real terms the sequence (n a_n) tends to zero. Our results encompass many known generalizations of Olivier’s theorem and give some new instances. The generalizations are done in two directions: we either drop the monotonicity assumption completely or we relax it to the monotonicity on a large set of indices. In both cases, the convergence of (na_n) is replaced by ideal convergence. In the second part of the paper, we examine families of sequences for which the assertions of our generalizations of Olivier’s theorem fail. Here, we are interested in finding large linear and algebraic substructures in these families.