English

Scarcity of partition congruences on semiprime progressions

Number Theory 2025-10-10 v2

Abstract

In recent work with Raum the authors considered congruences for the ordinary partition function p(n)p(n) of the form p(Qrn+β)0(mod)p(\ell Q^r n+\beta)\equiv 0\pmod\ell where ,Q5\ell, Q\geq 5 are prime and r{1,2}r\in \{1,2\}, and proved a number of results which show that such congruences are scarce in a precise sense. Here we improve one of our results when r=1r=1; in particular we prove (outside of trivial cases) that the set of primes QQ such that there exists βZ\beta\in \mathbb{Z} with p(Qn+β)0(mod)p(\ell Q n+\beta)\equiv 0\pmod \ell for all nn has density zero. The proof involves a modification of part of our previous argument and an application of a recent theorem of Dicks regarding modular forms of half-integral weight and level one modulo \ell.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2508.19512,
  title  = {Scarcity of partition congruences on semiprime progressions},
  author = {Scott Ahlgren and Olivia Beckwith},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2508.19512},
  year   = {2025}
}