FAULHABER POLYNOMIALS AND RECIPROCAL BERNOULLI POLYNOMIALS

About four centuries ago, Johann Faulhaber developed formulas for the power sum 1n + 2n + center dot center dot center dot + mn in terms of m(m + 1)/2. The resulting polynomials are called the Faulhaber polynomials. We first give a short survey of Faulhaber's work and discuss the results of Jacobi (1834) and the less known ones of Schroder (1867), which already imply some results published afterwards. We then show, for suitable odd integers n, the following properties of the Faulhaber polynomials Fn. The recurrences between Fn, Fn-1, and Fn-2 can be described by a certain differential operator. Furthermore, we derive a recurrence formula for the coefficients of Fn that is the complement of a formula of Gessel and Viennot (1989). As a main result, we show that these coefficients can be expressed and computed in different ways by derivatives of generalized reciprocal Bernoulli polynomials, whose values can also be interpreted as central coefficients. This new approach finally leads to a simplified representation of the Faulhaber polynomials. As an application, we obtain some recurrences of the Bernoulli numbers, which are induced by symmetry properties.