Counting the number of solutions to the Erdős-Straus equation on unit fractions

DOI10.1017/S1446788712000468MaRDI QIDQ2852274zbMATH OpenFDO

Authors Christian Elsholtz, Terence Tao

Publication date 8 October 2013

Published in Journal of the Australian Mathematical Society (Search for Journal in Brave)

Full work available at URL https://arxiv.org/abs/1107.1010

zbMATH Keywords

Average value of arithmetical functionSolution of a Diophantine equation by polynomials.Upper and lower bounds of arithmetical functionErdős-Strauss Conjecture

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Asymptotic results on arithmetic functions (11N37) Diophantine equations in many variables (11D72) Rate of growth of arithmetic functions (11N56) Rational numbers as sums of fractions (11D68)

Abstract: For any positive integer $n$, let $f(n)$ denote the number of solutions to the Diophantine equation $frac4n=frac1x+frac1y+frac1z$ with $x,y,z$ positive integers. The emph{ErdH{o}s-Straus conjecture} asserts that $f(n)>0$ for every $ngeq2$. To solve this conjecture, it suffices without loss of generality to consider the case when $n$ is a prime $p$. In this paper we consider the question of bounding the sum $su{m}_{p<N}f(p)$ asymptotically as $Noinfty$, where $p$ ranges over primes. Our main result establishes the asymptotic upper and lower bounds ${\displaystyle }$ N log^2 N ll sum_{p leq N} f(p) ll N log^2 N log log N.${\displaystyle }$ In particular, from this bound and the prime number theorem we have $f(p)=O(lo{g}^{3}ploglogp)$ for a subset of primes of density arbitrarily close to 1; thus a typical prime has a relatively small number of solutions to the ErdH{o}s-Straus Diophantine equation. We also establish some related results on $f$ and related quantities, for instance establishing the bound $$ for all primes $p$.

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Cited in

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• Explicit upper bound for an average number of divisors of quadratic polynomials
• A note on the Erdős-Straus conjecture
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• A geometric consideration of the Erdős-Straus conjecture
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• Explicit upper bound for the average number of divisors of irreducible quadratic polynomials
• Sums of four and more unit fractions and approximate parametrizations
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• Ternary Egyptian fractions with prime denominator
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