English

Limiting density of the Fibonacci sequence modulo powers of a prime

Number Theory 2025-08-26 v2

Abstract

For a given prime pp, we determine the limit, as λ\lambda \to \infty, of the density of residues modulo pλp^\lambda attained by the Fibonacci sequence. In particular, we show that this limiting density is related to zeros in the sequence of Lucas numbers modulo pp. The proof uses a piecewise interpolation of the Fibonacci sequence to the pp-adic numbers and a characterization of Wall-Sun-Sun primes pp in terms of the pp-adic absolute value of a number related to the pp-adic golden ratio.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2202.00704,
  title  = {Limiting density of the Fibonacci sequence modulo powers of a prime},
  author = {Nicholas Bragman and Eric Rowland},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2202.00704},
  year   = {2025}
}

Comments

21 pages, 1 figure; publication version