English

Deducing the positive odd density of $p(n)$ from that of a multipartition function: An unconditional proof

Combinatorics 2021-06-29 v2 Number Theory

Abstract

A famous conjecture of Parkin-Shanks predicts that p(n)p(n) is odd with density 1/21/2. Despite the remarkable amount of work of the last several decades, however, even showing this density is positive seems out of reach. In a 2018 paper with Judge, we introduced a different approach and conjectured the "striking" fact that, if for any A±1 (mod6)A \equiv \pm 1\ (\bmod 6) the multipartition function pA(n)p_A(n) has positive odd density, then so does p(n)p(n). Similarly, the positive odd density of any pA(n)p_{A}(n) with A3 (mod6)A\equiv 3\ (\bmod 6) would imply that of p3(n)p_3(n). Our conjecture was shown to be a corollary of an earlier conjecture of the same paper. In this brief note, we provide an unconditional proof of it. An important tool will be Chen's recent breakthrough on a special case of our earlier conjecture.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2103.09933,
  title  = {Deducing the positive odd density of $p(n)$ from that of a multipartition function: An unconditional proof},
  author = {Fabrizio Zanello},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2103.09933},
  year   = {2021}
}

Comments

Minor updates. To appear in the J. of Number Theory