Reduction of multiple harmonic sums and harmonic polylogarithms

The alternating and non-alternating harmonic sums and other algebraic objects of the same equivalence class are connected by algebraic relations which are induced by the product of these quantities and which depend on their index class rather than on their value. We show how to find a basis of the associated algebra. The length of the basis l is found to be ⩽ 1 / d , where d is the depth of the sums considered and is given by the 2nd Witt formula. It can be also determined by counting the Lyndon words of the respective index set. The relations derived can be used to simplify results of higher-order calculations in QED and QCD.