Prime power divisors of multinomial coefficients and Artin's conjecture (Q1323878)

Answering a question of \textit{P. Erdős} and \textit{R. L. Graham} [Old and new problems and results in combinatorial number theory (Enseign Math. Monogr. 28) (1980; Zbl 0434.10001)] the author recently [J. Reine Angew. Math. 430, 1-20 (1992; Zbl 0759.11004)] showed that the binomial coefficients \({2n \pm d \choose n}\) for ``small'' \(d\) have prime power factors \(p^ a\) with ``large'' exponents \(a\), if \(n\) is big enough. This result is now generalized to multinomial coefficients. In particular it is shown that, if \(a\) and \(\ell\) are given, then \((\ell m)\) \(!/(m!)^ \ell\) has a prime power divisor \(p^ a\), providing that \(m \geq m_ 0(a,\ell)\). The paper also considers the analogous problem for \(q\)-multinomial coefficients, formed from \([m]_ q! : = \prod^ m_{k = 1}{q^ k - 1 \over q - 1}\). Here there are similar results, at least for \(a=2\), providing that a positive proportion of primes have \(q\) as a primitive root. This of course relates the question to Artin's conjecture.