On Egyptian fractions
Abstract
We find a polynomial in three variables whose values at nonnegative integers satisfy the Erd\H{o}s-Straus Conjecture. Although the perfect squares are not covered by these values, it allows us to prove that there are arbitrarily long sequence of consecutive numbers satisfying the Erd\H{o}s-Straus Conjecture. We conjecture that the values of this polynomial include all the prime numbers of the form , which is checked up to . A greedy-type algorithm to find an Erd\H{o}s-Straus decomposition is also given; the convergence of this algorithm is proved for a wide class of numbers. Combining this algorithm with the mentioned polynomial we verify that all the natural numbers , , satisfy the Ed\H{o}s-Straus Conjecture.
Cite
@article{arxiv.1010.2035,
title = {On Egyptian fractions},
author = {Manuel Bello-Hernández and Manuel Benito and Emilio Fernández},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1010.2035},
year = {2012}
}
Comments
24 pages. Summit to a journal. This is a new version of our old paper. We include new results, see the new abstract