The Wiener–Ikehara theorem is a Tauberian theorem, originally published by Shikao Ikehara, a student of Norbert Wiener's, in 1931. It is a special case of Wiener's Tauberian theorems, which were published by Wiener one year later. It can be used to prove the prime number theorem (Chandrasekharan, 1969), under the assumption that the Riemann zeta function has no zeros on the line of real part one.

Let A(x) be a non-negative, monotonic nondecreasing function of x, defined for 0 ≤ x < ∞. Suppose that

${\displaystyle f(s)=\int _{0}^{\infty }A(x)e^{-xs}\,dx}$

converges for ℜ(s) > 1 to the function ƒ(s) and that, for some non-negative number c,

${\displaystyle f(s)-{\frac {c}{s-1}}}$

has an extension as a continuous function for ℜ(s) ≥ 1. Then the limit as x goes to infinity of e^−x A(x) is equal to c.

An important number-theoretic application of the theorem is to Dirichlet series of the form

${\displaystyle \sum _{n=1}^{\infty }a(n)n^{-s}}$

where a(n) is non-negative. If the series converges to an analytic function in

${\displaystyle \Re (s)\geq b}$

with a simple pole of residue c at s = b, then

${\displaystyle \sum _{n\leq X}a(n)\sim {\frac {c}{b}}X^{b}.}$

Applying this to the logarithmic derivative of the Riemann zeta function, where the coefficients in the Dirichlet series are values of the von Mangoldt function, it is possible to deduce the Prime number theorem from the fact that the zeta function has no zeroes on the line

${\displaystyle \Re (s)=1.}$

• S. Ikehara (1931), "An extension of Landau's theorem in the analytic theory of numbers", Journal of Mathematics and Physics of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 10: 1–12, Zbl 0001.12902
• Wiener, Norbert (1932), "Tauberian Theorems", Annals of Mathematics, Second Series, 33 (1): 1–100, doi:10.2307/1968102, ISSN 0003-486X, JFM 58.0226.02, JSTOR 1968102
• K. Chandrasekharan (1969). Introduction to Analytic Number Theory. Grundlehren der mathematischen Wissenschaften. Springer-Verlag. ISBN 3-540-04141-9.
• Hugh L. Montgomery; Robert C. Vaughan (2007). Multiplicative number theory I. Classical theory. Cambridge tracts in advanced mathematics. Vol. 97. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press. pp. 259–266. ISBN 0-521-84903-9.