Related papers: On the Skolem Problem and Prime Powers

It is an exposition of the work of Mignotte, Shorey, Tijdeman, Vereshchagin and Bacik on decidability of the vanishing problem for linear recurrence sequences of order 4.

Let $p_n$ be $n$th prime, and let $(S_n)_{n=1}^\infty:=(S_n)$ be the sequence of the sums of the first $2n$ consecutive primes, that is, $S_n=\sum_{k=1}^{2n}p_k$ with $n=1,2,\ldots$. Heuristic arguments supported by the corresponding…

We show that universal elliptic Carmichael numbers do not exist, answering a question of Silverman. Moreover, we show that the probability that an integer $n$, which is not a prime power, is an elliptic Carmichael number for a random curve…

Let $(U_n)_{n=0}^\infty$ and $(V_m)_{m=0}^\infty$ be two linear recurrence sequences. For fixed positive integers $k$ and $\ell$, fixed $k$-tuple $(a_1,\dots,a_k)\in \mathbb{Z}^k$ and fixed $\ell$-tuple $(b_1,\dots,b_\ell)\in…

An important unsolved question in number theory is the Lehmer's totient problem that asks whether there exists any composite number $n$ such that $\varphi(n)\mid n-1$, where $\varphi$ is the Euler's totient function. It is known that if any…

Let $p_n$ denote the $n$-th prime. For any $m\geq 1$, there exist infinitely many $n$ such that $p_{n}-p_{n-m}\leq C_m$ for some large constant $C_m>0$, and $$p_{n+1}-p_n\geq \frac{c_m\log n\log\log n\log\log\log\log n}{\log\log\log n}, $$…

We say that an arithmetical function $S:\mathbb{N}\rightarrow\mathbb{Z}$ has Lucas property if for any prime $p$, \begin{equation*} S(n)\equiv S(n_{0})S(n_{1})\ldots S(n_{r})\pmod p, \end{equation*} where $n=\sum_{i=0}^{r}n_{i}p^{i}$, with…

A Skolem sequence of order n is a sequence S_n=(s_{1},s_{2},...,s_{2n}) of 2n integers containing each of the integers 1,2,...,n exactly twice, such that two occurrences of the integer j in {1,2,...,n} are separated by exactly j-1 integers.…

Let $K$ be a field of characteristic zero and suppose that $f:\mathbb{N}\to K$ satisfies a recurrence of the form $$f(n)\ =\ \sum_{i=1}^d P_i(n) f(n-i),$$ for $n$ sufficiently large, where $P_1(z),...,P_d(z)$ are polynomials in $K[z]$.…

(Below, \Box means "perfect square") Let $P$ and $Q$ be non-zero integers. The Lucas sequence $\{U_n(P,Q)\}$ is defined by $U_0=0$, $U_1=1$, $U_n=P U_{n-1}-Q U_{n-2}$, $(n \geq 2)$. Historically, there has been much interest in when the…

Let $(U_n)_{n\geq 0}$ be a fixed linear recurrence sequence of integers with order at least two, and for any positive integer $\ell$, let $\ell \cdot 2^{\ell} + 1$ be a Cullen number. Recently in \cite{bmt}, generalized Cullen numbers in…

Let $\Omega$ be a bounded open interval, let $p>1$ and $\gamma>0$, and let $m:\Omega\rightarrow\mathbb{R}$ be a function that may change sign in $\Omega $. In this article we study the existence and nonexistence of positive solutions for…

The appearance of primes in a family of linear recurrence sequences labelled by a positive integer $n$ is considered. The terms of each sequence correspond to a particular class of Lehmer numbers, or (viewing them as polynomials in $n$)…

For a class of Lucas sequences ${x_n}$, we show that if $n$ is a positive integer then $x_n$ has a primitive prime factor which divides $x_n$ to an odd power, except perhaps when $n = 1, 2, 3 or 6$. This has several desirable consequences.

We speculate on the distribution of primes in exponentially growing, linear recurrence sequences $(u_n)_{n\geq 0}$ in the integers. By tweaking a heuristic which is successfully used to predict the number of prime values of polynomials, we…

We establish that the sequences formed by logarithms and by "fractional" powers of integers, as well as the sequence of prime numbers, are non-holonomic, thereby answering three open problems of Gerhold [Electronic Journal of Combinatorics…

Let P and Q be non-zero integers. The Lucas sequence U_n(P,Q), n=0,1,2,... is defined by U_0=0, U_1=1, U_n= P U_{n-1}-Q U_{n-2} for n>1. For each positive integer n<8 we describe all Lucas sequences with (P,Q)=1 having the property that…

A composite number $n$ is called a Lehmer number when $\phi(n) | n - 1$, where $\phi$ is the Euler totient function. Lehmer's totient problem asks if there exist any composite numbers $n$ such that $\phi(n)| n-1$? No such numbers are known.…

In this paper, we give new families of strong Skolem starters for $\mathbb{Z}_{p^n}$ and $\mathbb{Z}_{pq}$, for infinitely many odd primes $p,q\equiv1$ (mod 8) and $n>1$ be an integer.

This note concerns the non-existence of three consecutive powerful numbers. We use Pell equations, elliptic curves, and second-order recurrences to show that there are no such triplets with the middle term a perfect cube and each of the…