English

Highly Composite Numbers

Number Theory 2023-05-25 v1

Abstract

The main result of this thesis is to show that there are only finitely many integers nn such that both nn and d(n)d(n) are highly composite numbers at the same time, where d(n)d(n) is the divisor function. Bertrand's postulate [4] is used many times throughout the thesis and allows us to write a proof that is as simple (and as short) as possible. This thesis is meant to solve the open problem from the ``On-Line Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences" (OEIS): A189394 [3]. The main idea for solving the problem comes from the comment in A189394; nn will contain many primes with exponent 1 when nn is a large highly composite number. This implies that d(n)d(n) contains a lot of factors of 2. We then estimate the factor 2β12^{\beta_1} in d(n)d(n) in terms of the largest prime in d(n)d(n) from above and from below to give us a contradiction when nn is large enough. We end by finding a list of all highly composite nn such that d(n)d(n) is also highly composite.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2305.14350,
  title  = {Highly Composite Numbers},
  author = {Lars Magnus Øverlier},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2305.14350},
  year   = {2023}
}

Comments

11 pages, Master's thesis. 1 table

R2 v1 2026-06-28T10:43:25.400Z