English

Partitions into a small number of part sizes

Combinatorics 2016-05-05 v4

Abstract

We study νk(n)\nu_k(n), the number of partitions of nn into kk part sizes, and find numerous arithmetic progressions where ν2\nu_2 and ν3\nu_3 take on values divisible by 2 and 4. Expanding earlier work, we show ν2(An+B)0(mod4)\nu_2(An+B) \equiv 0 \pmod{4} for (A,B) = (36,30), (72,42), (252,114), (196,70), and likely many other progressions for which our method should easily generalize. Of some independent interest, we prove that the overpartition function pˉ(n)0(mod16)\bar{p}(n) \equiv 0 \pmod{16} in the first three progressions (the fourth is known), and thereby show that ν3(An+B)0(mod2)\nu_3(An+B) \equiv 0 \pmod{2} in each of these progressions as well, and discuss the relationship between these congruences in more generality. We end with open questions in this area.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1502.00366,
  title  = {Partitions into a small number of part sizes},
  author = {William J. Keith},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1502.00366},
  year   = {2016}
}

Comments

11 pages; v2, small correction to proof of Theorem 7; v3, clean up some explanations, acknowledge recent results from Xinhua Xiong on overpartitions mod 16; v4, final journal version to appear International Journal of Number Theory (Feb. 2017)