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Iteration Sums of The Euler Totient Function Regarding Powers of Fermat Primes

General Mathematics 2026-01-05 v3

Abstract

Euler totient function ϕ(n)\phi(n) plays a central role in number theory and is applied in areas such as cryptography. In this paper, we study iterations of the totient function. We first prove that for any integer n>2n>2, iteratively applying ϕ\phi eventually yields the value 22. Motivated by this terminal behavior, we examine sums of iterated totient values of the form ϕ(n)+ϕ(ϕ(n))+ϕ(ϕ(ϕ(n)))++ϕ(2)\phi(n)+\phi(\phi(n))+\phi(\phi(\phi(n)))+\cdots+\phi(2), where the summation terminates at ϕ(2)\phi(2). We show that for all integers of the form n=3kn = 3^k, this sum is equal to nn. We then extend this result to all powers of Fermat primes, deriving a closed-form expression for the corresponding summations.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2508.05698,
  title  = {Iteration Sums of The Euler Totient Function Regarding Powers of Fermat Primes},
  author = {Xiang Li and Allison Pacelli},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2508.05698},
  year   = {2026}
}

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23 pages, 0 figures