In this article, we compile the work done by various mathematicians on the topic of the fixed divisor of a polynomial. This article explains most of the results concisely and is intended to be an exhaustive survey. We present the results on fixed divisors in various algebraic settings as well as the applications of fixed divisors to various algebraic and number theoretic problems. The work is presented in an orderly fashion so as to start from the simplest case of $\Z,$ progressively leading up to the case of Dedekind domains. We also ask a few open questions according to their context, which may give impetus to the reader to work further in this direction. We describe various bounds for fixed divisors as well as the connection of fixed divisors with different notions in the ring of integer-valued polynomials. Finally, we suggest how the generalization of the ring of integer-valued polynomials in the case of the ring of $n \times n$ matrices over $\Z$ (or Dedekind domain) could lead to the generalization of fixed divisors in that setting.
We survey arithmetic and asymptotic properties of the alternating sum-of-divisors function $β$ defined by $β(p^a)=p^a-p^{a-1}+p^{a-2}-...+(-1)^a$ for every prime power $p^a$ ($a\ge 1$), and extended by multiplicativity. Certain open problems are also stated.
Let a be an integer and q a prime number. In this paper, we find an asymptotic formula for the number of positive integers n < x with the property that no divisor d > 1 of n lies in the arithmetic progression a modulo q.
We work an analogue of a classical arithmetic problem over polynomials. More precisely, we study the fixed points $F$ of the sum of divisors function $σ: F_2[x] \mapsto F_2[x]$ (defined \emph{mutatis mutandi} like the usual sum of divisors over the integers) of the form $F := A^2 \cdot S$, $S$ square-free, with $ω(S) \leq 3$, coprime with $A$, for $A$ even, of whatever degree, under some conditions. This gives a characterization of $5$ of the $11$ known fixed points of $σ$ in $F_2[x]$
We study equations of the form $σ(p^{q-1})=Az$, where $p$ is a prime, $q$ is a fixed odd prime, $A$ is a fixed integer and $z$ is an integer composed of primes in a fixed finite set. We shall improve upper bounds for the size and the number of solutions of such equations.
We study primitive divisors of terms of the sequence P_n=n^2+b, for a fixed integer b which is not a negative square. It seems likely that the number of terms with a primitive divisor has a natural density. This seems to be a difficult problem. We survey some results about divisors of this sequence as well as provide upper and lower growth estimates for the number of terms which have a primitive divisor.
We characterize the fixed divisor of a polynomial $f(X)$ in $\mathbb{Z}[X]$ by looking at the contraction of the powers of the maximal ideals of the overring ${\rm Int}(\mathbb{Z})$ containing $f(X)$. Given a prime $p$ and a positive integer $n$, we also obtain a complete description of the ideal of polynomials in $\mathbb{Z}[X]$ whose fixed divisor is divisible by $p^n$ in terms of its primary components.
Suppose $a$ and $b$ are two fixed positive integers such that $(a,b)=1.$ In this paper we shall establish an asymptotic formula for the mean square of the error term $Δ_{a,b}(x)$ of the general two-dimensional divisor problem.
We say that $d$ is an exponential unitary divisor of $n=p_1^{a_1}... p_r^{a_r}>1$ if $d=p_1^{b_1}... p_r^{b_r}$, where $b_i$ is a unitary divisor of $a_i$, i.e., $b_i\mid a_i$ and $(b_i,a_i/b_i)=1$ for every $i\in \{1,2,...,r\}$. We survey properties of related arithmetical functions and introduce the notion of exponential unitary perfect numbers.
Let $N$ be any fixed positive integer and define \begin{align*} S_N(x)=\sum_{m, n \leq x}d(n^2+Nm^2), \end{align*} where $d(n)$ is the divisor function. We evaluate asymptotically $S_N(x)$ for several $N$, extending earlier works of Gafurov and Yu on the case $N=1$.
For a function field $K$ and fixed polynomial $F\in K[x]$ and varying $f\in F$ (under certain restrictions) we give a lower bound for the degree of the greatest prime divisor of $F(f)$ in terms of the height of $f$, establishing a strong result for the function field analogue of a classical problem in number theory.
In this note we describe a method for finding prime numbers as fixed points of particularly simple sequences. Some basic calculations show that success rates for identifying primes this way are over 99.9%. In particular, it seems that the set of odd primes can be obtained as fixed points of the sequence which we call A(1), the sequence of smallest divisors of triangular numbers, where the divisors are positive numbers that have not yet appeared in the sequence.
The Banzhaf and Shapley-Shubik power indices were first introduced to measure the power of voters in a weighted voting system. Given a weighted voting system, the fixed point of such a system is found by continually reassigning each voter's weight with its power index until the system can no longer be changed by the operation. We characterize all fixed points under the Shapley-Shubik power index of the form $(a,b,\ldots,b)$ and give an algebraic equation which can verify in principle whether a point of this form is fixed for Banzhaf; we also generate Shapley-Shubik fixed classes of the form $(…
In this paper, we examine a natural question concerning the divisors of the polynomial x^n-1: "How often does x^n-1 have a divisor of every degree between 1 and n?" In a previous paper, we considered the situation when x^n-1 is factored in Z[x]. In this paper, we replace Z[x] with F_p[x], where p is an arbitrary-but-fixed prime. We also consider those n where this condition holds for all p.
In a recent paper, Lapkova uses a Tauberian theorem to derive the asymptotic formula for the divisor sum $\sum_{n \leq x} d( n (n+v))$ where $v$ is a fixed integer and $d(n)$ denotes the number of divisors of $n$. We reprove her result by following a suggestion of Hooley, namely investigating the relationship between this sum and the well-known sum $\sum_{n \leq x} d( n ) d (n+v)$. As such, we are able to furnish additional terms in the asymptotic formula.
We extend a lower bound of Munshi on sums over divisors of a number $n$ which are less than a fixed power of $n$ from the squarefree case to the general case. In the process we prove a lower bound on the entropy of a geometric distribution with finite support, as well as a lower bound on the probability that a random variable is less than its mean given that it satisfies a natural condition related to its third cumulant.
Motivated by a question of Venkataramana, we consider the greatest common divisor of $ϕ(f(n))$ where $f$ is a primitive polynomial with integer coefficients, and $n$ ranges over all natural numbers. Assuming Schinzel's hypothesis, we establish that this gcd may be bounded just in terms of the degree of the polynomial $f$. Unconditionally we establish such a bound for quadratic polynomials, as well as polynomials that split completely into linear factors. The paper also addresses a question of Calegari, and establishes that there are infinitely many $n$ such that $n^2+1$ is not divisible by any…
We address an arithmetic problem in the ring $\F_2[x]$ related to the fixed points of the sum of divisors function. We study some binary polynomials $A$ such that $σ(A)/A $ is still a binary polynomial. Technically, we prove that the only (unitary) perfect polynomials over $\F_2$ that are products of $x$, $x+1$ and of Mersenne primes are precisely the nine (resp. nine "classes") known ones. This follows from a new result about the factorization of $M^{2h+1} +1$, for a Mersenne prime $M$ and for a positive integer $h$.
It is proved that, if $k\ge2$ is a fixed integer and $1 \ll H \le X/2$, then $$ \int_{X-H}^{X+H}Δ^4_k(x)\d x \ll_εX^ε\Bigl(HX^{(2k-2)/k} + H^{(2k-3)/(2k+1)}X^{(8k-8)/(2k+1)}\Bigr), $$ where $Δ_k(x)$ is the error term in the general Dirichlet divisor problem. The proof uses the Vorono{\"ı}--type formula for $Δ_k(x)$, and the bound of Robert--Sargos for the number of integers when the difference of four $k$--th roots is small. We also investigate the size of the error term in the asymptotic formula for the $m$-th moment of $Δ_2(x)$.
For a fixed $θ\neq 0$, we define the twisted divisor function $$ τ(n, θ):=\sum_{d\mid n}d^{iθ}\ .$$ In this article we consider the error term $Δ(x)$ in the following asymptotic formula $$ \sum_{n\leq x}^*|τ(n, θ)|^2=ω_1(θ)x\log x + ω_2(θ)x\cos(θ\log x) +ω_3(θ)x + Δ(x),$$ where $ω_i(θ)$ for $i=1, 2, 3$ are constants depending only on $θ$. We obtain $$Δ(T)=Ω\left(T^{α(T)}\right) \text{ where } α(T) =\frac{3}{8}-\frac{c}{(\log T)^{1/8}} \text{ and } c>0,$$ along with an $Ω$-bound for the Lebesgue measure of the set of points where the above estimate holds.
For each $s\in \mathbb R$ and $n\in \mathbb N$, let $σ_s(n) = \sum_{d\mid n}d^s$. In this article, we give a comparison between $σ_s(an+b)$ and $σ_s(cn+d)$ where $a$, $b$, $c$, $d$, $s$ are fixed, the vectors $(a,b)$ and $(c,d)$ are linearly independent over $\mathbb Q$, and $n$ runs over all positive integers. For example, if $|s|\leq 1$, $a, b, c, d\in \mathbb N$ are fixed and satisfy certain natural conditions, then $$ σ_s(an+b) < σ_s(cn+d)\quad\text{ for all $n\leq M$} $$ where $M$ may be arbitrarily large, but in fact $σ_s(an+b) - σ_s(cn+d)$ has infinitely many sign changes. The results a…
For a fixed $b\in \mathbb{N}=\{1,2,3,\dots\}$, Goins et al. \cite{Harris} defined the concept of $b$-visibility for a lattice point $(r,s)$ in $L=\mathbb{N}\times \mathbb{N}$ which states that $(r,s)$ is $b$-visible from the origin if it lies on the graph of $f(x)=ax^b$, for some positive $a\in \mathbb{Q}$, and no other lattice point in $L$ lies on this graph between $(0,0)$ and $(r,s)$. Furthermore, to study the density of $b$-visible points in $L$ Goins et al. defined a generalization of greatest common divisor, denoted by $\gcd_b$, and proved that the proportion of $b$-visible lattice point…
Let f be an irreducible polynomial of degree d>=3 with no fixed prime divisor. We derive an asymptotic formula for the number of primes p<x such that f(p) is (d-1)-free.
We study the behavior of the greatest common divisor of a^k-1 and b^k-1, where a,b are fixed integers or polynomials, and k varies. In the integer case, we conjecture that when a and b are multiplicatively independent and in addition a-1 and b-1 are coprime, then a^k-1 and b^k-1 are coprime infinitely often. In the polynomial case, we prove a strong version of this conjecture. To do this we use a result of Lang's on the finiteness of torsion points on algebraic curves. We also give a matrix analogue of these results, where for a unimodular matrix A, we look at the greatest common divisor of th…
In this paper we consider in detail the composition of an irreducible polynomial with X^2 and suggest a recurrent construction of irreducible polynomials of fixed degree over finite fields of odd characteristics. More precisely, given an irreducible polynomial of degree n and order 2^rt with t odd, the construction produces ord_t(2)/d irreducible polynomials of degree n and order t for a certain divisor d of n. The construction can be used, for example, to search irreducible polynomials with specific requirements on its coefficients.
Let $\ell$ be any fixed prime number. We define the $\ell$-Genocchi numbers by $G_n:=\ell(1-\ell^n)B_n$, with $B_n$ the $n$-th Bernoulli number. They are integers. We introduce and study a variant of Kummer's notion of regularity of primes. We say that an odd prime $p$ is $\ell$-Genocchi irregular if it divides at least one of the $\ell$-Genocchi numbers $G_2,G_4,\ldots, G_{p-3}$, and $\ell$-regular otherwise. With the help of techniques used in the study of Artin's primitive root conjecture, we give asymptotic estimates for the number of $\ell$-Genocchi irregular primes in a prescribed arithm…
Let $p$ be a fixed prime, and let $v(a)$ stand for the exponent of $p$ in the prime factorization of the integer $a$. Let $f$ and $g$ be two monic polynomials with integer coefficients and nonzero resultant $r$. Write $S$ for the maximum of $v(\gcd (f(n), g(n)))$ over all integers $n$. It is known that $S \le v(r)$. We give various lower and upper bounds for the least possible value of $v(r)-S$ provided that a given power $p^s$ divides both $f(n)$ and $g(n)$ for all $n$. In particular, the least possible value is $ps^2-s$ for $s\le p$ and is asymptotically $(p-1)s^2$ for large $s$.
