Related papers: How did Fermat discover his theorem?

We show that the existence of a non-trivial solution of $x^n+y^n=p^n$, with $p$ a prime number, is equivalent to the existence of a solution of a certain (over-determined) system of $(n-1)$-recursion relations ("zipper" equations) in…

Bertrand's Postulate ensures existence of prime $p$ between $n$ and $2n$, $n$ an integer $\geq 2$ and the sieve of Eratosthenes, a very simple ancient algorithm, generates all prime numbers up to any given limit. Combining the above two, in…

The authors discuss what is provable security in cryptography. Think that provable security is asymptotic, relative, and dynamic, and only a supplement to but not a replacement of exact security analysis. Because the conjecture P != NP has…

Let $f(x)\in \mathbb{Z}[x]$ be an irreducible polynomial of degree $d\ge 1$. Let $k\ge2$ be an integer. The number of integers $n$ such that $f(n)$ is $k$-free is widely studied in the literature. In principle, one expects that $f(n)$ is…

Prime numbers seem to distribute among the natural numbers with no other law than that of chance, however its global distribution presents a quite remarkable smoothness. Such interplay between randomness and regularity has motivated sci-…

When people mention the number theoretical achievements in Ancient China, the famous Chinese Remainder Theorem always springs to mind. But, two more of them--the concept of primes and the algorithm for counting the greatest common divisor,…

Let $K$ be a totally real number field. For all prime number $p\geq 5$, let us denote by $F_p$ the Fermat curve of equation $x^p+y^p+z^p=0$. Under the assumption that $2$ is totally ramified in $K$, we establish some results about the set…

We show that Fermat's last theorem and a combinatorial theorem of Schur on monochromatic solutions of $a+b=c$ implies that there exist infinitely many primes. In particular, for small exponents such as $n=3$ or $4$ this gives a new proof of…

The famous Descartes' rule of signs from 1637 giving an upper bound on the number of positive roots of a real univariate polynomials in terms of the number of sign changes of its coefficients, has been an indispensable source of inspiration…

A study of certain Hamiltonian systems has lead Y. Long to conjecture the existence of infinitely many primes of the form $p=2[\alpha n]+1$, where $1<\alpha<2$ is a fixed irrational number. An argument of P. Ribenboim coupled with classical…

For a positive integer $n$ let $\mathfrak{P}_n=\prod_{s_p(n)\ge p} p,$ where $p$ runs over all primes and $s_p(n)$ is the sum of the base $p$ digits of $n$. For all $n$ we prove that $\mathfrak{P}_n$ is divisible by all "small" primes with…

A classic question in analytic number theory is to find asymptotics for $\sigma_{k}(x)$ and $\pi_{k}(x)$, the number of integers $n\leq x$ with exactly $k$ prime factors, where $\pi_{k}(x)$ has the added constraint that all the factors are…

Numbers (positive integers) are the most fundamental creatures of the human mind and the foundation to the scientific understanding of nature. Some mathematicians have suspected a link between prime numbers and secrets of creation.…

Let $m$ be a Carmichael number and let $L$ be the least common multiple of $p-1$, where $p$ runs over the prime factors of $m$. We determine all the Carmichael numbers $m$ with a Fermat prime factor such that $L=2^{\alpha}P^2$, where $k\in…

Prime numbers play a very vital role in modern cryptography and especially the difficulties involved in factoring numbers composed of product of two large prime numbers have been put to use in many modern cryptographic designs. Thus, the…

The Erdos-Kac theorem, a foundational result in probabilistic number theory, states that the number of prime factors of an integer follows a Gaussian distribution. In this paper we develop and analyze probabilistic models for "random…

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the relationship between prime numbers and sums of Fibonacci numbers. One of our main results says that for every sufficiently large integer $k$ there exists a prime number that can be represented as…

Consider the classical ElGamal digital signature scheme based on the modular relation $\alpha^m\equiv y^r\, r^s\ [p]$. In this work, we prove that if we can compute a natural integer $i$ such that $\alpha^i\ mod\ p$ is smooth and divides…

We construct closed forms that generate with repetitions all Mersenne primes, respectively all Fermat primes, all twin-prime pairs and all Sophie Germain primes. Also, we construct closed forms that count all Mersenne primes between $0$ and…

We give a new proof that there are infinitely many primes, relying on van der Waerden's theorem for coloring the integers, and Fermat's theorem that there cannot be four squares in an arithmetic progression. We go on to discuss where else…