English

A Theorem involving the denominators of Bernoulli numbers

Number Theory 2013-10-01 v1

Abstract

Consider the average of the first n k-th powers. We pose and answer the following natural question: For which values of n and k is this average an integer? If k is odd the answer is easy; it is an integer as long as n is incongruent to 2 modulo 4. If k is even then the criterion involves the denominator of the k-th Bernoulli number. The average is an integer iff nn is not divisible by any prime which divides the denominator of the k-th Bernoulli number.

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Cite

@article{arxiv.1309.7751,
  title  = {A Theorem involving the denominators of Bernoulli numbers},
  author = {Pantelis A. Damianou and Peter Schumer},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1309.7751},
  year   = {2013}
}

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6 pages