English

Three-term arithmetic progressions of consecutive powerful numbers

Number Theory 2026-05-11 v1

Abstract

We show that infinitely many three-term arithmetic progressions N,N+d,N+2dN, N+d, N+2d of powerful numbers exist with d=2N+1d = 2\sqrt{N} + 1. We further conjecture that infinitely many of these progressions consist of three consecutive terms in the sequence of powerful numbers, which would answer a question of Erd\H{o}s in the negative.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2605.06697,
  title  = {Three-term arithmetic progressions of consecutive powerful numbers},
  author = {Wouter van Doorn},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2605.06697},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

10 pages

R2 v1 2026-07-01T12:55:48.197Z