Trigonometric sums through Ramanujan’s theory of theta functions

Abstract

The mathematics literature contains many generalized trigonometric sums which are evaluated through contour integration methods, algebraic methods or through discrete Fourier analysis methods. The purpose of this paper is to show how Ramanujan’s theory of theta functions can be efficiently employed to evaluate certain generalized trigonometric sums. In the process, we obtain six interesting generalized trigonometric sums, that seem to be new.