Streamlined WZ method proofs of Van Hamme supercongruences
Abstract
Using the WZ method to prove supercongruences critically depends on an inspired WZ pair choice. This paper demonstrates a procedure for finding WZ pair candidates to prove a given supercongruence. When suitable WZ pairs are thus obtained, coupling them with the -adic approximation of by Long and Ramakrishna enables uniform proofs for the Van Hamme supercongruences (B.2), (C.2), (D.2), (E.2), (F.2), (G.2), and (H.2). This approach also yields the known extensions of G.2 modulo , and of H.2 modulo when is modulo . Finally, the Van Hamme supercongruence (I.2) is shown to be a special case of the WZ method where Gosper's algorithm itself succeeds.
Cite
@article{arxiv.2508.00343,
title = {Streamlined WZ method proofs of Van Hamme supercongruences},
author = {Andres Valloud},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2508.00343},
year = {2026}
}
Comments
Delete references to equation (14) in the previous version (in Long-Ramakrishna the stated result has implicit hypotheses, and here a simpler argument suffices). Cosmetic typographical and text improvements