Symmetric Pascal matrices modulo \(p\) (Q1826963)

The authors present results and conjectures concerning symmetric matrices associated to Pascal's triangle. Consider the symmetric matrix \(P(n)\) with coefficients \(p_{i,j}= \binom {i+j}{i}\), \(0\leq i,j< n\). We call \(P(n)\) the symmetric Pascal matrix of order \(n\). The entries of \(P(n)\) satisfy the recurrence: \(p_{i,j}= p_{i-1,j} + p_{i,j-1}\). The authors first give a formula for the determinant over \(\mathbb{Z}\) of the reduction modulo 2 with values in \(\{0,1\}\) and of the reduction modulo 3 with values in \(\{-1,0,1\}\) for such a matrix. Then they study the reduction modulo a prime \(p\) of the characteristic polynomials of these matrices. The main results imply a recursive formula for the prime \(p= 2\) and a conjectural recursive formula for \(p= 3\).