English

Gessel-Lucas congruences for sporadic sequences

Number Theory 2023-01-31 v1

Abstract

For each of the 1515 known sporadic Ap\'ery-like sequences, we prove congruences modulo p2p^2 that are natural extensions of the Lucas congruences modulo pp. This extends a result of Gessel for the numbers used by Ap\'ery in his proof of the irrationality of ζ(3)\zeta(3). Moreover, we show that each of these sequences satisfies two-term supercongruences modulo p2rp^{2r}. Using special constant term representations recently discovered by Gorodetsky, we prove these supercongruences in the two cases that remained previously open.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2301.12248,
  title  = {Gessel-Lucas congruences for sporadic sequences},
  author = {Armin Straub},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2301.12248},
  year   = {2023}
}

Comments

17 pages

R2 v1 2026-06-28T08:24:49.644Z