English

Partition functions that repel perfect-powers

Number Theory 2025-10-27 v2 Combinatorics

Abstract

A conjecture by Sun states that the partition function p(n)p(n), for n>1n>1, is never a perfect power. Recent work by Merca et al. proposes generalizations of perfect-power repulsion for p(n)p(n). In this note, we prove these generalizations for the functions pB(n)p_B(n), which count the number of partitions of nn with the largest part B\leq B. If B4B\geq 4 and k3k\geq 3, with k(B1)k\nmid (B-1), then we prove that there are only finitely many pairs (n,m)(n,m) for which pB(n)mkd.\lvert p_B(n)-m^k\rvert\le d. These results support Sun and Merca et al.'s conjectures, as pB(n)p(n)p_B(n) \rightarrow p(n) when B+.B \rightarrow +\infty. To prove this, we reduce the problem to Siegel's Theorem, which guarantees the finiteness of integral points on curves with genus 1\geq 1.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2510.19164,
  title  = {Partition functions that repel perfect-powers},
  author = {Ken Ono},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2510.19164},
  year   = {2025}
}

Comments

For the Academy of Romanian Scientists. In fact to appear in Annals of Acad. Rom. Sci. This version includes one new reference and one new remark

R2 v1 2026-07-01T06:58:55.563Z