English

On the tower factorization of integers

Number Theory 2024-05-30 v1

Abstract

Under the fundamental theorem of arithmetic, any integer n>1n>1 can be uniquely written as a product of prime powers pap^a; factoring each exponent aa as a product of prime powers qbq^b, and so on, one will obtain what is called the tower factorization of nn. Here, given an integer n>1n>1, we study its height h(n)h(n), that is, the number of "floors" in its tower factorization. In particular, given a fixed integer k1k\geq 1, we provide a formula for the density of the set of integers nn with h(n)=kh(n)=k. This allows us to estimate the number of floors that a positive integer will have on average. We also show that there exist arbitrarily long sequences of consecutive integers with arbitrarily large heights.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2308.09149,
  title  = {On the tower factorization of integers},
  author = {Jean-Marie De Koninck and William Verreault},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2308.09149},
  year   = {2024}
}

Comments

8 pages. Accepted for publication in the Amer. Math. Monthly

R2 v1 2026-06-28T11:58:12.315Z