Divisibility properties of a class of binomial sums (Q2472394)

In this nice paper, the authors study divisibility properties of binomial sums of the form \[ u_{a,b}^{\varepsilon}(n)=\sum_{k=0}^n (-1)^{\varepsilon k} \binom{n}{k}^a \binom{2n}{k}^b \] for nonnegative integers \(a,b,n\) and \(\varepsilon\in \{0,1\}\). In the second section, the authors gather all instances when the above sums are known to have a closed form, where by this it is meant that they can be represented as a sum of a fixed number of hypergeometric terms. In the third section, using Wolstenholme's congruence the authors show that \[ u_{a,b}^{\varepsilon}(p)\equiv 1+(-1)^{\varepsilon} 2^b\pmod {p^3} \] holds with a couple of exceptions when \(p\geq 5\) is a prime. They also classify all the instances when the above congruence holds for \(p=2\). In section 4, they investigate to what extent the above congruence holds for powers of \(2\). In sections 5 and 6 the authors prove various congruences modulo prime powers involving Bernoulli numbers. In section 7, extending a result of Calkin, the authors show that \(u_{a,b}^{\varepsilon}(n)\) is divisible by all primes from a certain interval provided that \(a+b+\varepsilon\) is even. This interval can be taken to be \((2n,(2+1/b)n+1)\) if \(a=1\). The paper concludes with a short section mentioning various possible generalizations to other binomial sums.