Related papers: Primes Generated by Recurrence Sequences

We study primitive divisors of terms of the sequence P_n=n^2+b, for a fixed integer b which is not a negative square. It seems likely that the number of terms with a primitive divisor has a natural density. This seems to be a difficult…

We consider the primes which divide the denominator of the x-coordinate of a sequence of rational points on an elliptic curve. It is expected that for every sufficiently large value of the index, each term should be divisible by a primitive…

We study the primitive divisors of the terms of $(\Delta_n)_{n \geq 1}$, where $\Delta_n=N_{K/ \mathbb{Q}}(u^n-1)$ for $K$ a real quadratic field, and $u>1$ a unit element of its ring of integers. The methods used allow us to find the terms…

Let $(b_n) = (b_1, b_2, ...)$ be a sequence of integers. A primitive prime divisor of a term $b_k$ is a prime which divides $b_k$ but does not divide any of the previous terms of the sequence. A zero orbit of a polynomial $f(z)$ is a…

We consider integer recurrences of the form a_n = f(a_{n-1}), where f is a quadratic polynomial with integer coefficients. We show, for four infinite families of f, that the set of primes dividing at least one term of such a sequence must…

Let $p$ be a prime. If an integer $g$ generates a subgroup of index $t$ in $(\mathbb Z/p\mathbb Z)^*,$ then we say that $g$ is a $t$-near primitive root modulo $p$. We point out the easy result that each primitive residue class contains a…

D.H. Lehmer found a quadratic polynomial such that 326 is a primitive root for the first 206 primes represented by this polynomial. It is shown that this is related to the class number one problem and prime producing quadratics. An…

A primitive prime divisor of an element a_n of a sequence (a_1,a_2,a_3,...) is a prime P that divides a_n, but does not divide a_m for all m < n. The Zsigmondy set Z of the sequence is the set of n such that a_n has no primitive prime…

We define a primitive index of an integer in a sequence to be the index of the term with the integer as a primitive divisor. For the sequences $k^u+h^u$ and $k^u-h^u$, we discern a formula to find the primitive indexes of any composite…

Primitive prime divisors play an important role in group theory and number theory. We study a certain number theoretic quantity, called $\Phi^*_n(q)$, which is closely related to the cyclotomic polynomial $\Phi_n(x)$ and to primitive prime…

Let $P(x) \in \mathbb{Z}[x]$ be a polynomial. We give an easy and new proof of the fact that the set of primes $p$ such that $p \mid P(n)$, for some $n \in \mathbb{Z}$, is infinite. We also get analog of this result for some special…

We prove the existence of primitive sets (sets of integers in which no element divides another) in which the gap between any two consecutive terms is substantially smaller than the best known upper bound for the gaps in the sequence of…

We consider the representation of primes as a sum of a prime and twice a triangular number. We prove that a subset of the primes having density 1 is expressible in this form. We conjecture that every odd prime number is expressible as a sum…

We estimate the number of primes represented by a general quadratic polynomial with discriminant $\Delta$, assuming that the corresponding real character is exceptional.

While the prime numbers have been subject to mathematical inquiry since the ancient Greeks, the accumulated effort of understanding these numbers has - as Marcus du Sautoy recently phrased it - 'not revealed the origins of what makes the…

In this paper, we develop Furstenberg's proof of infinity of primes, and prove several results about prime divisors of sequences of integers, including the celebrated Schur's theorem. In particular, we give a simple proof of a classical…

We study a recursively defined sequence which is constructed using the least common multiple. It has been conjectured that every term of that sequence is $1$ or a prime. In this paper we show that this claim is connected to a strong version…

Modulo a prime number, we define semi-primitive roots as the square of primitive roots. We present a method for calculating primitive roots from quadratic residues, including semi-primitive roots. We then present progressions that generate…

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 prove some theorems which give sufficient conditions for the existence of prime numbers among the terms of a sequence which has pairwise relatively prime terms.