English

Dynamics of the Fibonacci Order of Appearance Map

Number Theory 2023-09-27 v1

Abstract

The \textit{order of appearance} z(n) z(n) of a positive integer n n in the Fibonacci sequence is defined as the smallest positive integer j j such that n n divides the j j -th Fibonacci number. A \textit{fixed point} arises when, for a positive integer n n , we have that the nth n^{\text{th}} Fibonacci number is the smallest Fibonacci that n n divides. In other words, z(n)=n z(n) = n . In 2012, Marques proved that fixed points occur only when n n is of the form 5k 5^{k} or 125k 12\cdot5^{k} for all non-negative integers k k . It immediately follows that there are infinitely many fixed points in the Fibonacci sequence. We prove that there are infinitely many integers that iterate to a fixed point in exactly k k steps. In addition, we construct infinite families of integers that go to each fixed point of the form 125k12 \cdot 5^{k}. We conclude by providing an alternate proof that all positive integers nn reach a fixed point after a finite number of iterations.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2309.14501,
  title  = {Dynamics of the Fibonacci Order of Appearance Map},
  author = {Molly FitzGibbons and Steven J. Miller and Amanda Verga},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2309.14501},
  year   = {2023}
}

Comments

10 pages, 2 figures