On consecutive values of the Liouville function (Q1820810): Difference between revisions

Let \(\lambda\) (n) denote the Liouville function; i.e. \(\lambda (n)=+1\) or -1 according as the number of prime factors of n is odd or even. A very plausible conjecture is for any given numbers \(\epsilon_ i=\pm 1\), \(1\leq i\leq k\), there are infinitely many integers \(n\geq 1\) such that \(\lambda (n+i)=\epsilon_ i\) for \(i=1,...,k\). The conjecture is trivial in the cases \(k=1\) and \(k=2\). In this paper, the conjecture is proved in the case \(k=3\). The proof is simple and ingenious, but it yields no clue about how to extend the result to \(k\geq 4\).