English

On a conjecture of Graham on the p-divisibility of central binomial coefficients

Number Theory 2023-01-09 v2 Combinatorics

Abstract

We show that for every r1r \geq 1, and all rr distinct (sufficiently large) primes p1,...,pr>p0(r)p_1,..., p_r > p_0(r), there exist infinitely many integers nn such that (2nn){2n \choose n} is divisible by these primes to only low multiplicity. From a theorem of Kummer, an upper bound for the number of times that a prime pjp_j can divide (2nn){2n \choose n} is 1+logn/logpj1+\log n / \log p_j; and our theorem shows that for every ε>0\varepsilon > 0, r1r \geq 1, and any sufficiently large primes p1,...,pr>p0(ε,r)p_1,...,p_r > p_0(\varepsilon,r), we can find integers nn where for j=1,...,rj=1,...,r, pjp_j divides (2nn){2n \choose n} with multiplicity at most εlogn/logpj\varepsilon \log n/\log p_j. We connect this result to a famous conjecture by R. L. Graham on whether there are infinitely many integers nn such that (2nn){2n \choose n} is coprime to 105105.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2201.11274,
  title  = {On a conjecture of Graham on the p-divisibility of central binomial coefficients},
  author = {Ernie Croot and Hamed Mousavi and Maxie Schmidt},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2201.11274},
  year   = {2023}
}

Comments

The main theorem was corrected from previous draft. Several more corrections and simplifications were made