English

Sums of the floor function related to class numbers of imaginary quadratic fields

Number Theory 2025-10-07 v1

Abstract

A curious identity of Bunyakovsky (1882), made more widely known by P\'olya and Szeg{\H o} in their ``Problems and Theorems in Analysis", gives an evaluation of a sum of the floor function of square roots involving primes p1(mod4)p\equiv 1\pmod{4}. We evaluate this sum also in the case p3(mod4)p\equiv 3\pmod{4}, obtaining an identity in terms of the class number of the imaginary quadratic field Q(p){\mathbb Q}(\sqrt{-p}). We also consider certain cases where the prime pp is replaced by a composite integer. Class numbers of imaginary quadratic fields are again involved in some cases.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2510.04387,
  title  = {Sums of the floor function related to class numbers of imaginary quadratic fields},
  author = {Marc Chamberland and Karl Dilcher},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2510.04387},
  year   = {2025}
}