On the index of appearance of a Lucas sequence
Abstract
Let be a Lucas sequence, that is, a sequence of integers satisfying , , and for every integer , where and are fixed nonzero integers. For each prime number with , where , let be the rank of appearance of in , that is, the smallest positive integer such that . It is well known that exists and that , where is the Legendre symbol. Define the index of appearance of in as . For each positive integer and for every , let be the set of prime numbers such that , , and . Under the Generalized Riemann Hypothesis, and under some mild assumptions on , we prove that \begin{equation*} \#\mathcal{P}_{\mathbf{u}}(t, x) = A\, F_{\mathbf{u}}(t) \, G_{\mathbf{u}}(t) \, \frac{x}{\log x} + O_{\mathbf{u}}\!\left(\frac{x}{(\log x)^2} + \frac{x \log (2\log x)}{\varphi(t) (\log x)^2}\right) , \end{equation*} for all positive integers and for all , where is the Artin constant, is a multiplicative function, and is a periodic function (both these functions are effectively computable in terms of ). Furthermore, we provide some explicit examples and numerical data.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2212.06127,
title = {On the index of appearance of a Lucas sequence},
author = {Carlo Sanna},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2212.06127},
year = {2022}
}