Values of Bernoulli polynomials (Q1919889)

The main objective of this paper is to derive a formula for the expression \(B_{p-1} (a/q)- B_{p- 1}\bmod p\). Here, \(p\) is an odd prime, \(q\) and \(a\) are relatively prime integers, \(1\leq a\leq q\), and \(p\) does not divide \(q\). \(B_n\) means the Bernoulli number and \(B_n (t)\) the \(n\)th Bernoulli polynomial. This question was posed by \textit{E. Lehmer} [Ann. Math., II. Ser. 39, 350-360 (1938; Zbl 0019.00505)], who gave formulas for \(q=2, 3, 4\) and 6. The authors present the formula (7) \[ B_{p-1} (a/q)- B_{p-1} \equiv {\textstyle {q\over 2p}} (U_p- 1)\pmod p, \] where \(\{U_n\}\) is a special linear recurrence sequence of order \([{q\over 2}]\), constructed in this article, depending only on \(a\), \(q\) and the least positive residue of \(p\bmod q\). For \(q=5\) there is a nice formula (4) using Fibonacci numbers: \[ B_{p-1} (a/5)- B_{p-1} \equiv {\textstyle {5\over 4}} \bigl\{ \bigl( {\textstyle {ap \over 5}} \bigr) {\textstyle {1\over p}} F_{p-({5\over p})}+ {\textstyle {{5^{p- 1}} \over p}} \bigr\} \pmod p. \] The case \(p\equiv \pm a\pmod q\) is solved in a separate Theorem (pp. 120, 121). (There is a mistake in this theorem; the coefficients \(f_k\) must contain the following sum: \[ \sum_{0\leq i\leq [(D- 1- k)]} (-1)^i {{(D- 1- i)!} \over {i! (D- 1- 2i- k)!}} 2^{D- 1- 2i- k} .) \] Finally the authors deal with the generalized Bernoulli numbers \(B_{p-1, \chi}\), where \(\chi\) is an even character \(\text{mod } q\), particularly \(\chi (a)= ({a\over q})\).