English

On Egyptian fractions

Number Theory 2012-05-01 v2

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 4q+54q+5, which is checked up to 101410^{14}. 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 nn, 2n2×10142\le n\le 2\times 10^{14}, satisfy the Ed\H{o}s-Straus Conjecture.

Keywords

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

R2 v1 2026-06-21T16:26:34.278Z