English

Residue classes free of values of Euler's function

Number Theory 2020-05-06 v2

Abstract

We characterize which residue classes contain infinitely many totients (values of Euler's function) and which do not. We show that the union of all residue classes that are totient-free has asymptotic density 3/4, that is, almost all numbers that are 2 mod 4 are in a residue class that is totient-free. In the other direction, we show the existence of a positive density of odd numbers m, such that for any s0s\ge0 and any even number aa, the residue class a(mod2sm)a\pmod{2^sm} contains infinitely many totients.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2005.01078,
  title  = {Residue classes free of values of Euler's function},
  author = {Kevin Ford and Sergei Konyagin and Carl Pomerance},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2005.01078},
  year   = {2020}
}

Comments

Published in 1999, for Andrzej Schinzel's 60-th birthday. v2 - corrects a processing error that cut off the bottom of every page

R2 v1 2026-06-23T15:16:25.836Z