By the theory of elliptic curves, we study the integers representable as the product of the sum of four integers with the sum of their reciprocals and give a sufficient condition for the integers with a positive representation.
The set of integers which can be written as the sum of four prime cubes has lower density at least $0.009664$. This improves earlier bounds of $0.003125$ by Ren and $0.005776$ by Liu.
Let $\{U_n\}_{n \geqslant 0}$ and $\{G_m\}_{m \geqslant 0}$ be two linear recurrence sequences defined over the integers. We establish an asymptotic formula for the number of integers $c$ in the range $[-x, x]$ which can be represented as differences $ U_n - G_m$, when $x$ goes to infinity. In particular, the density of such integers is $0$.
Let $\{U_n\}_{n \geq 0}$ and $\{V_m\}_{m \geq 0}$ be two linear recurrence sequences. We establish an asymptotic formula for the number of integers $c$ in the range $[-x, x]$ which can be represented as differences $ U_n - V_m$. In particular, the density of such integers is $0$.
We prove that the greatest positive integer that is not expressible as a linear combination with integer coefficients of elements of the set $\{n^2,(n+1)^2,\ldots \}$ is asymptotically $O(n^2)$, verifying thus a conjecture of Dutch and Rickett. Furthermore we ask a question on the representation of integers as sum of four large squares.
Given a polynomial $f(x_1,x_2,\ldots, x_t)$ in $t$ variables with integer coefficients and a positive integer $n$, let $α(n)$ be the number of integers $0\leq a<n$ such that the polynomial congruence $f(x_1, x_2, \ldots, x_t)\equiv a\ (mod\ n)$ is solvable. We describe a method that allows to determine the function $α$ associated to polynomials of the form $c_1x_1^k+c_2x_2^k+\cdots+c_tx_t^k$. Then we apply this method to polynomials that involve sums and differences of squares, mainly to the polynomials $x^2+y^2, x^2-y^2$ and $x^2+y^2+z^2$.
Let $w(n)$ be an additive non-negative integer-valued arithmetic function which is equal to $1$ on primes. We study the distribution of $n + w(n)$ $\pmod p$ and give a lower bound for the density of the set of numbers which are not representable as $n + w(n)$.
Let $α$ be an algebraic integer of degree $d$, which is reciprocal. The house of $α$ is the largest modulus of its conjugates. We proved that $d$-th power of the house of reciprocal $α$ has a limit point. We presented a property of antireciprocal hexanomials. We compute the minimum of the houses of all reciprocal algebraic integers of degree $d$ having the minimal polynomial which is a factor of a $D$-th degree reciprocal or antireciprocal polynomial with at most eight monomials, say $\mathrm{mr}(d)$, for $d$ at most 180, $D\le 1.5d$ and $D\le 210$. We show that it is not necessary to take int…
Let $α$ be an algebraic integer of degree $d$, which is reciprocal. The house of $α$ is the largest modulus of its conjugates. We compute the minimum of the houses of all reciprocal algebraic integers of degree $d$ which are not roots of unity, say $\mathrm{mr}(d)$, for $d$ at most 34. We prove several lemmata and use them to avoid unnecessary calculations. The computations suggest several conjectures. The direct consequence of the last one is the conjecture of Schinzel and Zassenhaus. We demonstrate the utility of $d$-th power of the house of $α$.
We obtain results bounding the degree of the series $\sum_{n=1}^{\infty} 1/α_n$, where $\{α_n\}$ is a sequence of algebraic integers satisfying certain algebraic conditions and growth conditions. Our results extend results of Erdős, Hančl and Nair.
We prove that the integer part of the reciprocal of the tail of $ζ(s)$ at a rational number $s=\frac{1}{p}$ for any integer with $p \geq 5$ or $s=\frac{2}{p}$ for any odd integer with $p \geq 5$ can be described essentially as the integer part of an explicit quantity corresponding to it. To deal with the case when $s=\frac{2}{p},$ we use a result on the finiteness of integral points of certain curves over $\mathbb{Q}$.
In this note we associate a sequence of non-negative integers to any convergent series of positive real numbers and study this sequence for the series $\sum_{n \geq 1} n^{-k}$ where $k$ is an integer $\geq 2$.
Let $n$ and $k$ be integers such that $1\le k\le n$ and $f(x)$ be a nonzero polynomial of integer coefficients such that $f(m)\ne 0$ for any positive integer $m$. For any $k$-tuple $\vec{s}=(s_1, ..., s_k)$ of positive integers, we define $$H_{k,f}(\vec{s}, n):=\sum\limits_{1\leq i_{1}<\cdots<i_{k}\le n} \prod\limits_{j=1}^{k}\frac{1}{f(i_{j})^{s_j}}$$ and $$H_{k,f}^*(\vec{s}, n):=\sum\limits_{1\leq i_{1}\leq \cdots\leq i_{k}\leq n} \prod\limits_{j=1}^{k}\frac{1}{f(i_{j})^{s_j}}.$$ If all $s_j$ are 1, then let $H_{k,f}(\vec{s}, n):=H_{k,f}(n)$ and $H_{k,f}^*(\vec{s}, n):=H_{k,f}^*(n)$. Hong an…
In this paper, we prove the following result: {quote} Let $\A$ be an infinite set of positive integers. For all positive integer $n$, let $τ_n$ denote the smallest element of $\A$ which does not divide $n$. Then we have $$\lim_{N \to + \infty} \frac{1}{N} \sum_{n = 1}^{N} τ_n = \sum_{n = 0}^{\infty} \frac{1}{\lcm\{a \in \A | a \leq n\}} .$${quote} In the two particular cases when $\A$ is the set of all positive integers and when $\A$ is the set of the prime numbers, we give a more precise result for the average asymptotic behavior of ${(τ_n)}_n$. Furthermore, we discuss the irrationality of th…
Erdös and Niven proved in 1946 that for any positive integers $m$ and $d$, there are at most finitely many integers $n$ for which at least one of the elementary symmetric functions of $1/m, 1/(m+d), ..., 1/(m+(n-1)d)$ are integers. Recently, Wang and Hong refined this result by showing that if $n\geq 4$, then none of the elementary symmetric functions of $1/m, 1/(m+d), ..., 1/(m+(n-1)d)$ is an integer for any positive integers $m$ and $d$. Let $f$ be a polynomial of degree at least $2$ and of nonnegative integer coefficients. In this paper, we show that none of the elementary symmetric functio…
Let $a$ and $b$ be positive integers. In 1946, Erdős and Niven proved that there are only finitely many positive integers $n$ for which one or more of the elementary symmetric functions of $1/b, 1/(a+b),..., 1/(an-a+b)$ are integers. In this paper, we show that for any integer $k$ with $1\le k\le n$, the $k$-th elementary symmetric function of $1/b, 1/(a+b),..., 1/(an-a+b)$ is not an integer except that either $b=n=k=1$ and $a\ge 1$, or $a=b=1, n=3$ and $k=2$. This refines the Erdős-Niven theorem and answers an open problem raised by Chen and Tang in 2012.
If \(A \) is a set of natural numbers containing \(0 \), then there is a unique nonempty "reciprocal" set \(B \) of natural numbers (containing \(0 \)) such that every positive integer can be written in the form \(a + b \), where \(a \in A \) and \(b \in B \), in an even number of ways. Furthermore, the generating functions for \(A \) and \(B \) over \(\FF_2 \) are reciprocals in \(\FF_2 [[q]] \). We consider the reciprocal set \(B \) for the set \(A \) containing \(0 \) and all integers such that \(σ(n) \) is odd, where \(σ(n) \) is the sum of all the positive divisors of \(n \). This problem…
For a fixed positive integer $m$ and any partition $m = m_1 + m_2 + \cdots + m_e$ , there exists a sequence $\{n_{i}\}_{i=1}^{k}$ of positive integers such that $$m=\frac{1}{n_{1}}+\frac{1}{n_{2}}+\cdots+\frac{1}{n_{k}},$$ with the property that partial sums of the series $\{\frac{1}{n_i}\}_{i=1}^{k}$ can only represent the integers with the form $\sum_{i\in I}m_i$, where $I\subset\{1,...,e\}$.
In this paper, we give the integer parts of reciprocals of tails of the alternating Riemann zeta function at $s=1,2,3,4$ by using several new inequalities and elementary method.
We give upper and lower bounds for the largest integer not representable as positive linear combination of three given integers, disproving an upper bound conjectured by Beck, Einstein and Zacks.
By $(\mathbb{Z}^+)^{\infty}$ we denote the set of all the infinite sequences $\mathcal{S}=\{s_i\}_{i=1}^{\infty}$ of positive integers (note that all the $s_i$ are not necessarily distinct and not necessarily monotonic). Let $f(x)$ be a polynomial of nonnegative integer coefficients. Let $\mathcal{S}_n:=\{s_1, ..., s_n\}$ and $H_f(\mathcal{S}_n):=\sum_{k=1}^{n}\frac{1}{f(k)^{s_{k}}}$. When $f(x)$ is linear, Feng, Hong, Jiang and Yin proved in [A generalization of a theorem of Nagell, Acta Math. Hungari, in press] that for any infinite sequence $\mathcal{S}$ of positive integers, $H_f(\mathcal{…
Given positive integers $a_1,...,a_n$ with $\gcd(a_1,...,a_n) = 1$, we call an integer t representable if there exist nonnegative integers $m_1,...,m_n$ such that $t = m_1 a_1 + ... + m_n a_n$. In this paper, we discuss the linear diophantine problem of Frobenius: namely, find the largest integer which is not representable. We call this largest integer the Frobenius number $g(a_1,...,a_n)$. We extend this problem to asking for the smallest integer $g_k(a_1,...,a_d)$ beyond which every integer is represented more than k times. We concentrate on the case d=2 and prove statements about $g_k(a,b)$…
As a corollary of the main result of our recent paper, {\em On the rational approximation of the sum of the reciprocals of the Fermat numbers} published in this same journal, we prove that for each integer $b\geq 2$ the irrationality exponent of $\sum_{n\geqslant 0} s_2(n)/b^n$ is equal to $2$.
There is a growing literature on sums of reciprocals of polynomial functions of recurrence relations with constant coefficients and fixed depth, such as Fibonacci and Tribonacci numbers, products of such numbers, and balancing numbers (numbers $n$ such that the sum of the integers less than $n$ equals the sum of the $r$ integers immediately after, for some $r$ which is called the balancer of $n$; If $n$ is included in the summation, we have the cobalancing numbers, and $r$ is called the cobalancer of $n$). We generalize previous work to reciprocal sums of depth two recurrence sequences with ar…
It is well known since A. J. Kempner's work that the series of the reciprocals of the positive integers whose the decimal representation does not contain any digit 9, is convergent. This result was extended by F. Irwin and others to deal with the series of the reciprocals of the positive integers whose the decimal representation contains only a limited quantity of each digit of a given nonempty set of digits. Actually, such series are known to be all convergent. Here, letting $S^{(r)}$ $(r \in \mathbb{N})$ denote the series of the reciprocal of the positive integers whose the decimal represent…
Let $X$ be a set of positive integers, and let $\mathbb Z_K$ be the ring of integers of a number field $K$ of degree $n$. Denote by $N(I)$ the absolute norm of an ideal $I$ of $\mathbb Z_K$, and by $\mathcal A$ the set of principal ideals $a\mathbb Z_K$ such that $a$ is an atom of $\mathbb Z_K$ and $a$ divides $m$ for some $m \in X$. Building upon the ideas of Clarkson from [Proc. Amer. Math. Soc. 17 (1966), 541], we show that, if the series $\sum_{m \in X} 1/m$ diverges, then so does the series $\sum_{\mathfrak a \in \mathcal A} |N(\mathfrak a)|^{-1/n}$. Most notably, this generalizes a class…
In this work we show that based on a conjecture for the pair correlation of integers representable as sums of two squares, which was first suggested by Connors and Keating and reformulated here, the second moment of the distribution of the number of representable integers in short intervals is consistent with a Poissonian distribution, where "short" means of length comparable to the mean spacing between sums of two squares. In addition we present a method for producing such conjectures through calculations in prime power residue rings and describe how these conjectures, as well as the above st…
We consider a family of integer sequences generated by nonlinear recurrences of the second order, which have the curious property that the terms of the sequence, and integer multiples of the ratios of successive terms (which are also integers), appear interlaced in the continued fraction expansion of the sum of the reciprocals of the terms. Using the rapid (double exponential) growth of the terms, for each sequence it is shown that the sum of the reciprocals is a transcendental number.
A classical theorem of Kempner states that the sum of the reciprocals of positive integers with missing decimal digits converges. This result is extended to much larger families of "missing digits" sets of positive integers with convergent harmonic series.
A classical theorem of Kempner states that the sum of the reciprocals of positive integers with missing decimal digits converges. This result is extended to much larger families of "missing digits" sets of positive integers with both convergent and divergent harmonic series.
Given coprime positive integers $a_1 < ...< a_d$, the Frobenius number $F$ is the largest integer which is not representable as a non-negative integer combination of the $a_i$. Let $g$ denote the number of all non-representable positive integers: Wilf conjectured that $d \geq \frac{F+1}{F+1-g}$. We prove that for every fixed value of $\lceil \frac{a_1}{d} \rceil$ the conjecture holds for all values of $a_1$ which are sufficiently large and are not divisible by a finite set of primes. We also propose a generalization in the context of one-dimensional local rings and a question on the equality $…
Given coprime positive integers $g_1 < \ldots < g_e$, the Frobenius number $F=F(g_1,\ldots,g_e)$ is the largest integer not representable as a linear combination of $g_1,\ldots,g_e$ with non-negative integer coefficients. Let $n$ denote the number of all representable non-negative integers less than $F$; Wilf conjectured that $F+1 \le e n$. We provide bounds for $g_1$ and for the type of the numerical semigroup $S=\langle g_1,\ldots,g_e \rangle$ in function of $e$ and $n$, and use these bounds to prove that $F+1 \le q e n$, where $q= \left \lceil \frac{F+1}{g_1} \right \rceil$, and $F+1 \le e …
Let $n$ be a positive integer. In 1915, Theisinger proved that if $n\ge 2$, then the $n$-th harmonic sum $\sum_{k=1}^n\frac{1}{k}$ is not an integer. Let $a$ and $b$ be positive integers. In 1923, Nagell extended Theisinger's theorem by showing that the reciprocal sum $\sum_{k=1}^{n}\frac{1}{a+(k-1)b}$ is not an integer if $n\ge 2$. In 1946, Erdős and Niven proved a theorem of a similar nature that states that there is only a finite number of integers $n$ for which one or more of the elementary symmetric functions of $1,1/2, ..., 1/n$ is an integer. In this paper, we present a generalization o…
We give nontrivial bounds for the bilinear sums $$ \sum_{u = 1}^{U} \sum_{v=1}^V α_u β_v \mathbf{\,e}_p(u/f(v)) $$ where $\mathbf{\,e}_p(z)$ is a nontrivial additive character of the prime finite field ${\mathbb F}_p$ of $p$ elements, with integers $U$, $V$, a polynomial $f\in {\mathbb F}_p[X] $ and some complex weights $\{α_u\}$, $\{β_v\}$. In particular, for $f(X)=aX+b$ we obtain new bounds of bilinear sums with Kloosterman fractions. We also obtain new bounds for similar sums with multiplicative characters of ${\mathbb F}_p$.
We prove that the reciprocal sum $S_k(x)$ of the least common multiple of $k\geq 3$ positive integers in $\N\cap [1,x]$ satisfies $$ S_k(x)=P_{2^k-1}(\log x)+O(x^{-θ_k+ε}) $$ where $P$ is a polynomial of degree $2^k-1$ and $θ_k=\frac{2^k}{(k+1)^{\frac{k+1}2}}\cdot \frac3{2^k+6k-5}$. This was conjectured in Hilberdink, Luca, and Tóth~\cite[Remark 2.4]{HLT}. We also prove asymptotic formulas for similar sums conjectured there.
For certain sequences $A$ of positive integers with missing $g$-adic digits, the Dirichlet series $F_A(s) = \sum_{a\in A} a^{-s}$ has abscissa of convergence $σ_c < 1$. The number $σ_c$ is computed. This generalizes and strengthens a classical theorem of Kempner on the convergence of the sum of the reciprocals of a sequence of integers with missing decimal digits.
If A is a set of nonnegative integers containing 0, then there is a unique nonempty set B of nonnegative integers such that every positive integer can be written in the form a+b, where a\in A and b\in B, in an even number of ways. We compute the natural density of B for several specific sets A, including the Prouhet-Thue-Morse sequence, {0} \cup {2^n : n \geq 0}, and random sets, and we also study the distribution of densities of B for finite sets A. This problem is motivated by Euler's observation that if A is the set of n that have an odd number of partitions, then B is the set of pentagonal…
This translation has been published in Stephen Hawking (ed.), "God Created the Integers", published in 2007 by Running Press. There may have been some changes to the final published version and this copy. This is a translation from the Latin original, "De summis serierum reciprocarum" (1735). E41 in the Enestrom index. In this paper Euler finds an exact expression for the sum of the squares of the reciprocals of the positive integers, namely pi^2/6. He shows this by applying Newton's identities relating the roots and coefficients of polynomials to the power series of the sine function. Indeed,…
Let $F_1=1,F_2=1,\ldots$ be the Fibonacci sequence. Motivated by the identity $\displaystyle\sum_{k=0}^{\infty}\frac{1}{F_{2^k}}=\frac{7-\sqrt{5}}{2}$, Erdös and Graham asked whether $\displaystyle\sum_{k=1}^{\infty}\frac{1}{F_{n_k}}$ is irrational for any sequence of positive integers $n_1,n_2,\ldots$ with $\frac{n_{k+1}}{n_k}\geq c>1$. We resolve the transcendence counterpart of their question: as a special case of our main theorem, we have that $\displaystyle\sum_{k=1}^{\infty}\frac{1}{F_{n_k}}$ is transcendental when $\frac{n_{k+1}}{n_k}\geq c>2$. The bound $c>2$ is best possible thanks to…
Two theorems of elmentary arithmetic, one stating that the sum of the reciprocals of any number of consecutive positive integers is never an integer, and a generalization thereof by Trygve Nagell, are shown to be provable inside a very weak arithmetic, Richard Kaye's $PA^-$, in which there is no induction axiom whatsoever.
There are two main interrelated goals of this paper. Firstly we investigate the sums \[ S_N(α,γ):=\sum_{n=1}^N\frac{1}{n\|nα-γ\|}~~~\text{and}~~~ R_N(α,γ):=\sum_{n=1}^N\frac{1}{\|nα-γ\|}\,, \] where $α$ and $γ$ are real parameters and $\|\cdot\|$ is the distance to the nearest integer. Our theorems improve upon previous results of W. M. Schmidt and others, and are (up to constants) best possible. Related to the above sums, we also obtain upper and lower bounds for the cardinality of \[ \{1\le n\le N:\|nα-γ\|<\varepsilon\} \, , \] valid for all sufficiently large $N$ and all sufficiently small …
It is known that the sum of the reciprocal of integers, $\sum_n (1/n)$, and the sum of the reciprocal of primes, $\sum_n (1/p_n)$, both diverge. Here, we study a series made from primes that sums exactly to 1. We also show this sum is simply related to an infinite product over primes. We then generalize the form of the series (and its related product), extending this idea to other number theoretic sets such as twin primes. Evaluating a product made from twin primes gives a new mathematical constant.
We obtain reasonably tight upper and lower bounds on the sum $\sum_{n \leqslant x} φ\left( \left\lfloor{x/n}\right\rfloor\right)$, involving the Euler functions $φ$ and the integer parts $\left\lfloor{x/n}\right\rfloor$ of the reciprocals of integers.