Related papers: Congruences concerning Legendre polynomials II

Many combinatorial sequences (for example, the Catalan and Motzkin numbers) may be expressed as the constant term of $P(x)^k Q(x)$, for some Laurent polynomials $P(x)$ and $Q(x)$ in the variable $x$ with integer coefficients. Denoting such…

In this paper we confirm three conjectures of Z.-W. Sun on determinants. We first show that any odd integer $n>3$ divides the determinant $$\left|(i^2+dj^2)\left(\frac{i^2+dj^2}n\right)\right|_{0\le i,j\le (n-1)/2},$$ where $d$ is any…

Let $p$ be a prime, and let $n>0$ and $r$ be integers. In this paper we study Fleck's quotient $$F_p(n,r)=(-p)^{-\lfloor(n-1)/(p-1)\rfloor} \sum_{k=r(mod p)}\binom {n}{k}(-1)^k\in Z.$$ We determine $F_p(n,r)$ mod $p$ completely by certain…

Let $p$ be an odd prime, and define $$G_p(x)=\prod_{k=1}^{(p-1)/2}\left(x-e^{2\pi i k^2/p}\right).$$ In this paper we study values of $G_p(x)$ at roots of unity via Galois theory, and confirm some previous conjectures. For example, for any…

We give a short proof of the following known congruence: for every odd prime $p$ $$\sum_{k=0}^{p-1}{2k\choose k}^2 16^{-k}\equiv (-1)^{{p-1\over 2}}\pmod{p^2}.$$ Moreover, we provide some new results connected with the above congruence.

For each positive integer $m$, the $m$th order harmonic numbers are given by $$H_n^{(m)}=\sum_{0<k\le n}\frac1{k^m}\ \ (n=0,1,2,\ldots).$$ We discover exact values of some series involving harmonic numbers of order not exceeding four. For…

In recent years, the congruence $$ \sum_{\substack{i+j+k=p\\ i,j,k>0}} \frac1{ijk} \equiv -2 B_{p-3} \pmod{p}, $$ first discovered by the last author have been generalized by either increasing the number of indices and considering the…

In this paper we evaluate several determinants involving quadratic residues modulo primes. For example, for any prime $p>3$ with $p\equiv3\pmod4$ and $a,b\in\mathbb Z$ with $p\nmid ab$, we prove that $$\det\left[ 1+\tan\pi\frac{aj^2+bk^2}p…

We derive modular parametrizations for certain infinite series whose summands involve central binomial coefficients and higher-order harmonic numbers. When the rates of convergence are certain rational numbers, modularity allows us to…

Let $p$ be a prime, and let $f(x)$ be an integer-valued polynomial. By a combinatorial approach, we obtain a nontrivial lower bound of the $p$-adic order of the sum $$\sum_{k=r(mod p^{\beta})}\binom{n}{k}(-1)^k f([(k-r)/p^{\alpha}]),$$…

It is shown that for any prime $p$ and any natural numbers $\ell, m,$ and $s$ such that $0<s<p$, the three following congruences \begin{align*}\sum_{i\ge \ell+1}(-1)^{m-i} {m \choose i}{m+s-1+i(p-1) \choose m+s-1+\ell(p-1)} &\equiv 0 \bmod…

In 2014, Wang and Cai established the following harmonic congruence for any odd prime $p$ and positive integer $r$, \begin{equation*} Z(p^{r})\equiv-2p^{r-1}B_{p-3} ~(\bmod ~ p^{r}), \end{equation*} where $…

In this paper we obtain some sophisticated combinatorial congruences involving binomial coefficients and confirm two conjectures of the author and Davis. They are closely related to our investigation of the periodicity of the sequence…

Suppose that $n$ is $0$ or $4$ modulo $6$. We show that there are infinitely many primes of the form $p^2 + nq^2$ with both $p$ and $q$ prime, and obtain an asymptotic for their number. In particular, when $n = 4$ we verify the `Gaussian…

The Delannoy numbers and Schr\"oder numbers are given by \begin{align*} D_n=\sum_{k=0}^n{n\choose k}{n+k\choose k}\quad \text{and}\quad S_n=\sum_{k=0}^n{n\choose k}{n+k\choose k}\frac{1}{k+1}, \end{align*} respectively. Let $p>3$ be a…

Let $p^k m^2$ be an odd perfect number with special prime $p$. Extending previous work of the authors, we prove that the inequality $m < p^k$ follows from $m^2 - p^k = 2^r t$, where $r \geq 2$ and $\gcd(2,t)=1$, under the following…

Given a prime $p$ and a positive integer $k$, let $\mathrm{M}_{n}(\mathbb{Z}/p^{k}\mathbb{Z})$ be the ring of $n \times n$ matrices over $\mathbb{Z}/p^{k}\mathbb{Z}$. We consider the number of solutions $X \in…

Using Zeilberger's algorithm, we here give a proof of the supercongruence $$ \sum_{n=0}^{\frac{p^r-3}{4}}(8n+1)\frac{\left(\frac{1}{4}\right)_n^4}{(1)_n^4}\equiv -p^3…

Let ${\mathcal{P}_{n}}$ denote the set of positive integers which are prime to $n$. Let $B_{n}$ be the $n$-th Bernoulli number. For any prime $p \ge 11$ and integer $r\ge 2$, we prove that $$ \sum\limits_{\begin{smallmatrix}…

In this paper, we investigate sums of four squares of integers whose prime factorizations are restricted, making progress towards a conjecture of Sun that states that two of the integers may be restricted to the forms $2^a3^b$ and $2^c5^d$.…