On the least common multiple of random \(q\)-integers (Q2658349)

It is a consequence of the Prime Number Theorem that the logarithm of the least common multiple of the first \(n\) positive integers is asymptotically equal to \(n\): \[\log \text{lcm} (1,2,\dots,n)\sim n.\] Several extensions of this result have been studied before, for instance, when the numbers \(1,\dots,n\) are replaced by \(f(1),\dots,f(n)\) for a certain polynomial \(f\) or by a randomly chosen subset of \(\{1,2,\dots,n\}\). In the present paper, the \(q\)-analog of the random version of the problem is investigated. Let \(\mathcal{B}(n, \alpha)\) denote the probabilistic model in which a random set \(A \subseteq \{1, \dots , n\}\) is constructed by picking independently each element of \(\{1, \dots , n\}\) with probability \(\alpha\). For a positive integer \(k\) let \([k]_q:=1+q+q^2+\dots+q^{k-1}\in \mathbb{Z}[q]\) and for a set \(\mathcal S\) of positive integers let \([\mathcal{S}]_q:=\{[k]_q:k\in \mathcal{S} \}\). Let \(\mathcal A\) be a random subset in \(\mathcal{B}(n,\alpha)\) and \(X:=\deg \text{lcm} ([\mathcal{A}]_q)\). In this paper the growth rate of the expected value and the variance of \(X\) is determined, which results imply an almost sure asymptotic formula for \(X\). Namely, as \(\alpha n \to \infty\), we have \[ \deg \text{lcm} ([\mathcal{A}]_q) \sim \frac{3}{\pi^2}\cdot \frac{\alpha \text{Li}_2 (1-\alpha) }{1-\alpha} \cdot n^2,\] with probability \(1-o(1)\), where \(\text{Li}_2(z):=\sum\limits_{k=1}^\infty z^k/k^2\) is the dilogarithm.