On the number of divisors of the least common multiples of shifted prime powers (Q2238285): Difference between revisions

Let \(p\) be a prime number and \(\tau(n)\) be the number of divisors of \(n\). In the paper under review the authors study the least common multiple of \(p^i-1\) and \(p^i+1\) for \(i=1,2,\dots,k\). They prove that as \(x\to\infty\), \[ \sum_{p\leq x}\tau\left(\mathrm{lcm}\left[p^k-1, p^{k-1}-1, \dots, p-1\right]\right)\asymp_k x\left(\log x\right)^{k-1}, \] and \[ \sum_{p\leq x}\tau\left(\mathrm{lcm}\left[p^k+1, p^{k-1}+1, \dots, p+1\right]\right)\asymp_k x\left(\log x\right)^{k-1}. \] As a partial application, for example, the authors mention that the number of divisors of \(p^k+1\) is related to the number of reduced Egyptian fractions of length 2 with denominator \(p^k\), and \(\tau\left(\mathrm{lcm}\left[p^k-1, p^{k-1}-1, \dots, p-1\right]\right)\) is related to the exponent of the group \(\mathrm{GL}_k(\mathbb{F}_p)\) of invertible \(k\times k\) matrices with entries in the finite field with \(p\) elements.