Related papers: How did Fermat discover his theorem?

We formalise the proof of the first case of Fermat's Last Theorem for regular primes using the \emph{Lean} theorem prover and its mathematical library \emph{mathlib}. This is an important 19th century result that motivated the development…

Cryptography, derived from Greek meaning hidden writing, uses mathematical techniques to secure information by converting it into an unreadable format. While cryptography as a science began around 100 years ago, its roots trace back to…

In RSA cryptography numbers of the form $pq$, with $p$ and $q$ two distinct proportional primes play an important role. For a fixed real number $r>1$ we formalize this by saying that an integer $pq$ is an RSA-integer if $p$ and $q$ are…

In 1874, Mertens famously proved an asymptotic formula for the product $p/(p-1)$ over all primes $p$ up to $x$. On the other hand, one may expand Mertens' prime product into series over numbers $n$ with only small prime factors. It is…

Let $p>3$ be a prime and $b\ge 2$ an integer such that $p$ does not divide $b$. Then $1/p$ has a periodic digit expansion with respect to the basis $b$. The length $q$ of the period is the (multiplicative) order of $b$ mod $p$. In the case…

The idea of generating prime numbers through sequence of sets of co-primes was the starting point of this paper that ends up by proving two conjectures, the existence of infinitely many twin primes and the Goldbach conjecture. The main idea…

Through a series of elementary exercises, we explain the fractal structure of Pascal's triangle when written modulo $p$ using an 1852 theorem due to Kummer: A prime $p$ divides $\dfrac {n!}{i!j!} $ if and only if there is a carry in the…

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…

Let $p\ge 5$ be a prime, and let $q_p(2):=(2^{p-1}-1)/p$ be the Fermat quotient of $p$ to base 2. The following curious congruence was conjectured by L. Skula and proved by A. Granville $$ q_p(2)^2\equiv…

Let $p\geq 3$ be a prime number. A Fermat curve over $\mathbb{Q}$ of exponent $p$ is defined by an equation of the shape $ax^p+by^p+cz^p=0$, where $a,b,c$ are non-zero rational numbers. We prove in this article that there exist infinitely…

As long as people have studied mathematics, they have wanted to know how many primes there are. Getting precise answers is a notoriously difficult problem, and the first suitable technique, due to Riemann, inspired an enormous amount of…

Given a collection $\{ G_i\}_{i=1}^d$ of finite groups and a ring $R$, we have previously introduced and studied certain foundational properties of the join ring $\mathcal{J}_{G_1, G_2, \ldots, G_d}(R)$. This ring bridges two extreme…

Let $k\ge 2$ and $\{L_n^{(k)}\}_{n\geq 2-k}$ be the sequence of $k$-Lucas numbers whose first $k$ terms are $0,\ldots,0,2,1$ and each term afterwards is the sum of the preceding $k$ terms. In this paper, we solve the Diophantine equation…

It is pointed out that the Mersenne primes $M_p=(2^p-1)$ and associated perfect numbers ${\cal M}_p=2^{p-1}M_p$ play a significant role in string theory; this observation may suggest a classification of consistent string theories.

The square root modulo problem is a known primitive in designing an asymmetric cryptosystem. It was first attempted by Rabin. Decryption failure of the Rabin cryptosystem caused by the 4-to-1 decryption output is overcome efficiently in…

In this work, the author shows a sufficient and necessary condition for an integer of the form $(zn-y^n)/(z-y)$ to be divisible by some perfect $mth$ power $p$, where $p$ is an odd prime and $m$ is a positive integer. A constructive method…

The prime numbers look like a randomly chosen sequence of natural numbers, but there is still no strict theory to determine 'Randomness'. In these years, cryptography has developed a battery of statistical tests for randomness. In this…

Let $p$ be an odd prime number. Using modular arguments, we give an easy testable condition which allows often to prove Fermat's Last Theorem over the quadratic field ${\bf Q}(\sqrt{5})$ for the exponent $p$. It is related to the Wendt's…

Prime factorization has been a buzzing topic in the field of number theory since time unknown. However, in recent years, alternative avenues to tackle this problem are being explored by researchers because of its direct application in the…

Despite their simple definition as $\mathfrak{q}_p(b):=\frac{b^{p-1}-1}{p} \pmod p$, for $0\le b \le p^2-1$ and $\gcd(b,p)=1$, and their regular arrangement in a $p\times(p-1)$ Fermat quotient matrix $\mathtt{FQM}(p)$ of integers from…