The Marcinkiewicz-Zygmund Property for Riemann Differences with Geometric Nodes

Abstract: We study when a Riemann difference of order $ n $ possesses the Marcinkiewicz-Zygmund (MZ) property: that is, whether the conditions $ f(h) = o(h^{n-1}) $ and $ Df(h) = o(h^n) $ imply $ f(h) = o(h^n) $. This implication is known to hold for some classical examples with geometric nodes, such as $ {0, 1, q, \dots, q^{n-1}} $ and $ {1, q, \dots, q^n} $, leading to a conjecture that these are the only such Riemann differences with the MZ property. However, this conjecture was disproved by the third-order example with nodes $ {-1, 0, 1, 2} $, and we provide further counterexamples and a general classification here. We establish a complete analytic criterion for the MZ property by developing a recurrence framework: we analyze when a function $ R(h) $ satisfying $ D(h) = R(qh) - A R(h) $, together with $ D(h) = o(h^n) $ and $ R(h) = o(h^{n-1}) $, forces $ R(h) = o(h^n) $. We prove that this holds if and only if $ A $ lies outside a critical modulus annulus determined by $ q $ and $ n $, covering both $ |q| > 1 $ and $ |q| < 1 $ cases. This leads to a complete characterization of all Riemann differences with geometric nodes that possess the MZ property, and provides a flexible analytic framework applicable to broader classes of generalized differences.