English

Lower Bounds on the Least Common Multiple of a Polynomial Sequence and its Radical

Number Theory 2025-09-18 v4

Abstract

Cilleruelo conjectured that for an irreducible polynomial fZ[X]f \in \mathbb{Z}[X] of degree d2d \geq 2, denoting Lf(N)=lcm(f(1),f(2),f(N))L_f(N)=\mathrm{lcm}(f(1),f(2),\ldots f(N)) one has logLf(n)(d1)NlogN.\log L_f(n)\sim(d-1)N\log N. He proved it in the case d=2d=2 but it remains open for every polynomial with d>2d>2. While the tight upper bound logLf(n)(d1)NlogN\log L_f(n)\lesssim (d-1)N\log N is known, the best known general lower bound due to Sah is logLf(n)NlogN.\log L_f(n)\gtrsim N\log N. We give an improved lower bound for a special class of irreducible polynomials, which includes the decomposable irreducible polynomials f=gh,g,hZ[x],degg,degh2f=g\circ h,\,g,h\in\mathbb Z[x],\mathrm{deg}\, g,\mathrm{deg}\, h\ge 2, for which we show logLf(n)d1ddeggNlogN.\log L_f(n)\gtrsim \frac{d-1}{d-\mathrm{deg}\, g}N\log N. We also improve Sah's lower bound logf(N)2dNlogN\log\ell_f(N)\gtrsim \frac 2dN\log N for the radical f(N)=rad(Lf(N))\ell_f(N)=\mathrm{rad}(L_f(N)) for all ff with d3d\ge 3 and give a further improvement for polynomials ff with a small Galois group and satisfying an additional technical condition, as well as for decomposable polynomials.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2401.05184,
  title  = {Lower Bounds on the Least Common Multiple of a Polynomial Sequence and its Radical},
  author = {Alexei Entin},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2401.05184},
  year   = {2025}
}

Comments

v2: added second part to Theorem 2 and Corollary 1.5; added relevant citations; v3: refined second part of Corollary 1.5 from v2 and separated it into its own theorem v3: minor corrections to references and citations