English

Refinements of Erd\H{o}s's irrationality criterion for certain sparse infinite series

Number Theory 2026-01-29 v1

Abstract

In this paper, we establish new irrationality criteria for certain sparse power series. As applications of these criteria, we generalize a result of Erd\H{o}s and obtain several irrationality results for various infinite series involving the classical arithmetic functions. For example, we prove that for any integers t2t\ge2 and k0k\geq0, the numbers n=1d(n)ktσ(n)andn=1d(n)ktϕ(n) \sum_{n=1}^{\infty} \frac{d(n)^k}{t^{\sigma(n)}} \quad\text{and}\quad \sum_{n=1}^{\infty} \frac{d(n)^k}{t^{\phi(n)}} are both irrational, where d(n)d(n), σ(n)\sigma(n), and ϕ(n)\phi(n) denote the number of divisors, the sum of divisors, and Euler's totient functions, respectively.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2601.20743,
  title  = {Refinements of Erd\H{o}s's irrationality criterion for certain sparse infinite series},
  author = {Hajime Kaneko and Yuta Suzuki and Yohei Tachiya},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2601.20743},
  year   = {2026}
}

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20 pages