Related papers: How did Fermat discover his theorem?

Mersenne primes, renowned for their captivating form as $2^p - 1$, have intrigued mathematicians for centuries. In this paper, we embark on a captivating quest to unveil the intricate nature of Mersenne primes, seamlessly integrating…

Let $\lfloor t\rfloor$ denote the integer part of $t\in\mathbb{R}$ and $\|x\|$ the distance from $x$ to the nearest integer. Suppose that $1/2<\gamma_2<\gamma_1<1$ are two fixed constants. In this paper, it is proved that, whenever $\alpha$…

Our main source of inspiration was a talk by Hendrik Lenstra on harmonic numbers, which are numbers whose only prime factors are two or three. Gersonides proved 675 years ago that one can be written as a difference of harmonic numbers in…

Sophie Germain (1776-1831) was the first woman we know who did important original research in mathematics, specifically in elasticity theory and number theory. Celebrating her semiquincentennial year, we outline Germain's recently unearthed…

This paper explores vulnerabilities in RSA cryptosystems that arise from improper prime number selection during key generation. We examine two primary attack vectors: Fermat's factorization method, which exploits RSA keys generated with…

For a fixed integer a>1, we suggest that the probability of nullity of the p-Fermat quotient q(p,a) is much lower than 1/p for any arbitrary large prime number p. For this we use various heuristics, justified by means of numerical…

Dirichlet's proof of infinitely many primes in arithmetic progressions was published in 1837, introduced L-series for the first time, and it is said to have started rigorous analytic number theory. Dirichlet uses Euler's earlier work on the…

We show that there are infinitely many primes $p$ such that $p-1$ is divisible by a square $d^2 \geq p^\theta$ for $\theta=1/2+1/2000.$ This improves the work of Matom\"aki (2009) who obtained the result for $\theta=1/2-\varepsilon$ (with…

This study is mainly about the discrete logarithm problem in the ElGamal cryptosystem over the abelian group U(n) where n is one of the following forms p^m, or 2p^m where p is an odd large prime and m is a positive integer. It is another…

For a prime $p$, let $Z(p)$ be the smallest positive integer $n$ so that $p$ divides $F_{n}$, the $n$th term in the Fibonacci sequence. Paul Bruckman and Peter Anderson conjectured a formula for $\zeta(m)$, the density of primes $p$ for…

In 1855 H. J. S. Smith proved Fermat's two-square using the notion of palindromic continuants. In his paper, Smith constructed a proper representation of a prime number $p$ as a sum of two squares, given a solution of…

In 1845, Bertrand conjectured that twice any prime strictly exceeds the next prime. Tchebichef proved Bertrand's postulate in 1850. In 1934, Ishikawa proved a stronger result: the sum of any two consecutive primes strictly exceeds the next…

Let $k>2$ be a prime such that $2^k-1$ is a Mersenne prime. Let $n = 2^{\alpha-1}p$, where $\alpha>1$ and $p<3\cdot 2^{\alpha-1}-1$ is an odd prime. Continuing the work of Cai et al. and Jiang, we prove that $n\ |\ \sigma_k(n)$ if and only…

We discuss the equation $a^p + 2^\a b^p + c^p =0$ in which $a$, $b$, and $c$ are non-zero relatively prime integers, $p$ is an odd prime number, and $\a$ is a positive integer. The technique used to prove Fermat's Last Theorem shows that…

This is an exposition, in 12 pages including all prerequisites and a generalization, of Karamata's little known elementary proof of the Landau-Ingham Tauberian theorem, a result in real analysis from which the Prime Number Theorem follows…

We call an integer N>1 primover to base a if it either prime or overpseudoprime to base a. We prove, in particular, that every Fermat number is primover to base 2. We also indicate a simple process of receiving of primover divisors of…

This 1964 paper developed as an off-shoot to the foundational query: Do we discover the natural numbers (Platonically), or do we construct them linguistically? The paper also assumes computational significance in the light of Agrawal, Kayal…

In this paper we show that for any prime number $p$ not equal to $11$ or $19$, the Tribonacci number $T_{p-1}$ is divisible by $p$ if and only if $p$ is of the form $x^2+11y^2$. We first use class field theory on the Galois closure of the…

A classical problem in analytic number theory is to study the distribution of fractional part $\alpha p+\beta$ modulo 1, where $\alpha$ is irrational and $p$ runs over the set of primes. We consider the subsequence generated by the primes…

The chronicle of prime numbers travel back thousands of years in human history. Not only the traits of prime numbers have surprised people, but also all those endeavors made for ages to find a pattern in the appearance of prime numbers has…