Denominators of Egyptian fractions. II (Q1229743)

[Part I, cf. J. Number Theory 8, 157-168 (1976; Zbl 0328.10010).] A positive fraction \(a/N\) is said to be written in Egyptian form if we write \(a/N=1/n_1+1/n_2+ \ldots +1/n_k\), \(0<n_1<n_2< \ldots <n_k\), where the \(n_i\) are integers. Among the many expansions for each fraction \(a/N\) there is some expansion for which \(n_k\) is minimal. Let \(D(a,N)\) denote the minimal value of \(n_k\). Define \(D(N)\) by \(D(N)= \max \{D(a,N): 0<a<N \}\). We are interested in the behavior of \(D(N)\). In this paper we show that on the one hand for a prime \(P\) large enough that \(\log_{2r}P \geq 1\), \[ D(P) \geq {P \log P \log_2P \over \log_{r+1}P \sum ^{r+1}_{j=4} \log_jP} \] and on the other hand that for \(\epsilon >0\) and \(N\) sufficiently large (Theorem 1 and its corollary yield more precise statements), \[ D(N) \leq (1+ \epsilon)N(\log N)^2. \] We conjecture that the exponent 2 can be replaced by \((1+ \delta)\) for \(\delta >0\). As part of the proof of the above results we need to analyze the number of distinct subsums of the series \(\sum ^N_{i=1}1/i\), say \(S(N)\). We show that whenever \(\log_{2r}N \geq 1\), \[ {\alpha N \over \log N} \prod ^r_{j=3} \log_jN \leq \log S(N) \leq {N \log_rN \over \log N} \prod ^r_{j=3} \log_jN \] for some \(\alpha \geq 1/e\).