English

Prime Number Decomposition using the Talbot Effect

Optics 2018-07-04 v2

Abstract

We report on prime number decomposition by use of the Talbot effect, a well-known phenomenon in classical near field optics whose description is closely related to Gauss sums. The latter are a mathematical tool from number theory used to analyze the properties of prime numbers as well as to decompose composite numbers into their prime factors. We employ the well-established connection between the Talbot effect and Gauss sums to implement prime number decompositions with a novel approach, making use of the longitudinal intensity profile of the Talbot carpet. The new algorithm is experimentally verified and the limits of the approach are discussed.

Cite

@article{arxiv.1803.01559,
  title  = {Prime Number Decomposition using the Talbot Effect},
  author = {Karl Pelka and Jasmin Graf and Thomas Mehringer and Joachim von Zanthier},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1803.01559},
  year   = {2018}
}

Comments

- 6 pages, 3 figures - 6 pages, 3 figures, added references in the introduction

R2 v1 2026-06-23T00:42:04.527Z