English

A Conjecture on the Collatz-Kakutani Path Length for the Mersenne Primes

Number Theory 2012-08-06 v3

Abstract

We present here a new conjecture for the nature of the Mersenne prime numbers by connecting it with the Collatz-Kakutani problem. By introducing a natural path length on the basis of the Collatz-Kakutani tree, we conjecture that this path length of a Mersenne prime from the root of the Collatz-Kakutani tree is approximately proportional to the index of the Mersenne prime. We also discuss difference of behaviors between Mersenne numbers and Mersenne primes.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1104.2804,
  title  = {A Conjecture on the Collatz-Kakutani Path Length for the Mersenne Primes},
  author = {Toru Ohira and Hiroshi Watanabe},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1104.2804},
  year   = {2012}
}

Comments

10 pages, 4 figures, submitted for a publication