English

Wolstenholme and Vandiver primes

Number Theory 2022-03-29 v2

Abstract

A prime pp is a Wolstenholme prime if (2pp)2\binom{2p}{p}\equiv2 mod p4p^4, or, equivalently, if pp divides the numerator of the Bernoulli number Bp3B_{p-3}; a Vandiver prime pp is one that divides the Euler number Ep3E_{p-3}. Only two Wolstenholme primes and eight Vandiver primes are known. We increase the search range in the first case by a factor of 1010, and show that no additional Wolstenholme primes exist up to 101110^{11}, and in the second case by a factor of 2020, proving that no additional Vandiver primes occur up to this same bound. To facilitate this, we develop a number of new congruences for Bernoulli and Euler numbers mod pp that are favorable for computation, and we implement some highly parallel searches using GPUs.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2101.11157,
  title  = {Wolstenholme and Vandiver primes},
  author = {Andrew R. Booker and Shehzad Hathi and Michael J. Mossinghoff and Timothy S. Trudgian},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2101.11157},
  year   = {2022}
}

Comments

26 pages; to appear in Ramanujan J

R2 v1 2026-06-23T22:34:09.526Z