Asymptotics for the partial fractions of the restricted partition generating function I

Abstract: The generating function for $p_N(n)$, the number of partitions of $n$ into at most $N$ parts, may be written as a product of $N$ factors. We find the behavior of coefficients in the partial fraction decomposition of this product as $N \to \infty$ by applying the saddle-point method, where the saddle-point we need is associated to a zero of the analytically continued dilogarithm. Our main result disproves a conjecture of Rademacher.