English

Some divisibility properties of binomial and q-binomial coefficients

Number Theory 2021-06-01 v3 Combinatorics

Abstract

We first prove that if aa has a prime factor not dividing bb then there are infinitely many positive integers nn such that (an+bnan)\binom {an+bn} {an} is not divisible by bn+1bn+1. This confirms a recent conjecture of Z.-W. Sun. Moreover, we provide some new divisibility properties of binomial coefficients: for example, we prove that (12n3n)\binom {12n} {3n} and (12n4n)\binom {12n} {4n} are divisible by 6n16n-1, and that (330n88n)\binom {330n} {88n} is divisible by 66n166n-1, for all positive integers nn. As we show, the latter results are in fact consequences of divisibility and positivity results for quotients of qq-binomial coefficients by qq-integers, generalizing the positivity of qq-Catalan numbers. We also put forward several related conjectures.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1301.7651,
  title  = {Some divisibility properties of binomial and q-binomial coefficients},
  author = {Victor J. W. Guo and C. Krattenthaler},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1301.7651},
  year   = {2021}
}

Comments

16 pages, add a note that Conjectures 7.2 and 7.3 are proved, to appear in J. Number Theory

R2 v1 2026-06-21T23:18:39.345Z