A method for deriving hypergeometric and related identities from the $H^2$ Hardy norm of conformal maps

We explore a method which is implicit in a paper of Burkholder of identifying the $H^2$ Hardy norm of a conformal map with the explicit solution of Dirichlet’s problem in the complex plane. Using the series form of the Hardy norm, we obtain an identity for the sum of a series obtained from the conformal map. We use this technique to evaluate several hypergeometric sums, as well as several sums that can be expressed as convolutions of the terms in a hypergeometric series.