## The zeta function and roots of unity

In Mathworld’s entry on the Riemann zeta function, one finds in eq. 119-121 the curious evaluations,

\begin{aligned}\sum_{n=1}^\infty [\zeta(2n)-1] &= \frac{3}{4}\\ \sum_{n=1}^\infty [\zeta(3n)-1] &= \frac{1}{3}\left[-(-1)^{2/3}H_{(3-\sqrt{-3})/2}+(-1)^{1/3}H_{(3+\sqrt{-3})/2} \right]\\ \sum_{n=1}^\infty [\zeta(4n)-1] &= \frac{1}{8}\,(7-2\pi\coth(\pi))\end{aligned}

However, using the Inverse Symbolic Calculator, the first and the third, plus another one, can also be expressed as,

\begin{aligned}\sum_{n=1}^\infty [\zeta(2n)-1] &= \frac{5}{4}-\sum_{n=1}^\infty \frac{1}{2n^2+2n} = \frac{3}{4}\\ \sum_{n=1}^\infty [\zeta(4n)-1] &= \frac{5}{8}-\sum_{n=1}^\infty \frac{1}{2n^2+2}=\frac{7}{8}-\frac{1}{4}\,\pi i \cot(\pi w_4)\\ \sum_{n=1}^\infty [\zeta(6n)-1] &= \frac{5}{12}-\sum_{n=1}^\infty \frac{1}{2n^2+2n+2}=\frac{11}{12}-\frac{1}{6}\sqrt{3}\pi i\cot(\pi w_6)\end{aligned}

where $w_p = e^{2\pi i/p}$.  Interesting similar forms, isn’t it?

Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem to generalize to $\zeta(pn)$ for p = 8.  However, there is still p = 3 and, based on the even case, I assumed perhaps roots of unity are also involved.  First, given the Euler-Mascheroni constant $\gamma$, and the digamma function,

$\psi_0(z) = \psi[z]$

where we suppress the subscript for ease of notation.  Define,

$u_p = e^{\pi i/p } = (-1)^{1/p}$

and the pth root chosen such that $(-1)^{1/p} \not = -1$, then I found that p = 3 generalizes as,

\begin{aligned} 3\sum_{n=1}^\infty [\zeta(3n)-1] &= 3 + \gamma + u_3^{-1}\, \psi[u_3^{-1}]+u_3\,\psi[u_3]\\&= 0.66506\dots\\ 5\sum_{n=1}^\infty [\zeta(5n)-1] &= 6 + \gamma + \sum_{k=0}^1 \Big(u_5^{-(2k+1)}\, \psi[u_5^{-(2k+1)}]+u_5^{(2k+1)}\,\psi[u_5^{(2k+1)}]\Big)\\&=0.18976\dots\\ 7\sum_{n=1}^\infty [\zeta(7n)-1] &= 9 + \gamma + \sum_{k=0}^2 \Big(u_7^{-(2k+1)}\, \psi[u_7^{-(2k+1)}]+u_7^{(2k+1)}\,\psi[u_7^{(2k+1)}]\Big)\\&=0.05887\dots\end{aligned}

and so on, though a rigorous proof is needed that it holds true for all odd numbers p.

P.S. Going back to even p, note that p = 2, 4, 6 can also be expressed by the digamma function since,

\begin{aligned} &\sum_{n=1}^\infty \frac{1}{an^2+bn+c} = \frac{1}{\sqrt{b^2-4ac}}\Big(\psi[\tfrac{2a+b+\sqrt{b^2-4ac}}{2a}]-\psi[\tfrac{2a+b-\sqrt{b^2-4ac}}{2a}]\Big)\end{aligned}

for $a \not=0$.