I was wondering about
$$f(0) = 1$$
$$f(n+1) = (a n + b) f(n) + c \sum_{i=0}^{n} f(i) f(n-i)$$
for given positive integers $a,b,c$.
How fast does this grow ?
Such equations occur often and are somewhere between the recurrence equation of factorial and of the Catalan numbers.
In fact I can get a closed form for them. But that might not be the easiest way to get a growth rate.
Getting the closed form directly relates to why this occurs; it is related to combinatorics, calculus and differential equations.
Just like we get the generating taylor series for the Catalan numbers we get a similar equation here :
$$c(x) = 1 + c x c(x)^2 + a x c'(x) + b x c(x)$$
For instance look at this calculus problem and related comment I found here on MSE :
https://math.stackexchange.com/a/525096/39261
$$\mathcal{K}(3n)=\frac{\pi^2}{6\cdot64^n}a_{2n},$$ where $a_n$ is the sequence defined recursively as follows: $$a_0=1,\ \ a_{n+1}=(6\,n+4)\,a_n+\sum\limits_{i=0}^n a_i\,a_{n-i}$$
Here $a=6,b=4,c=1$
and we get the generating taylor series $c(x)$ :
$$c(x) = 1 + x c(x)^2 + 6 x c'(x) + 4 x c(x)$$
We can solve this differential equation and get "this monster" :
$$c(x) = -(6 (k_1 (-2/3 e^{-(2 x)/3} x^{7/6} U(23/24, 13/6, (2 x)/3) - 23/36 e^{-(2 x)/3} x^{7/6} U(47/24, 19/6, (2 x)/3) + 7/6 e^{-(2 x)/3} x^{1/6} U(23/24, 13/6, (2 x)/3)) - 1/6 e^(-(2 x)/3) x^{1/6} (4 x L_{-47/24}^{13/6}((2 x)/3) + (4 x - 7) L_{-23/24}^{7/6}((2 x)/3))))/(-k_1 e^{-(2 x)/3} x^{7/6} U(23/24, 13/6, (2 x)/3) - e^{-(2 x)/3} x^{7/6} L_{-23/24}^{7/6}((2 x)/3))$$
where $L$ is the associated Laguerre polynomial and $U$ is the confluent hypergeo function of the second kind.
But it seems nontrivial to me how fast this function (the taylor coefficients of $c(x)$ ) grows ? What are good asymptotics ?
Do we need to resort to general techniques or is this specific case open for a specific strategy ?
Can we get around needing to solve the differential equation for the generating function ? Since it seems not so easy to me ?
so far the main question.
I couldnt help wondering about fractional derivatives. And ramanujans master theorem.
Since we seem to have
$K(3n)$ is given by the n'th coefficient of $c(x)$.
Maybe it is true that
$K(s) =$ the s'th coefficient of $c(x)$ in the sense of fractional derivatives.
This is just a comment. I am aware of different ideas of fractional calculus ...