The elementary symmetric functions of reciprocals of elements of arithmetic progressions

zbMATH Open1320.11008arXiv1311.1389MaRDI QIDQ485032FDOQ485032

Authors: Chunlin Wang, Shaofang Hong 

Publication date: 8 January 2015

Published in: Acta Mathematica Hungarica (Search for Journal in Brave)

Abstract: Let $a$ and $b$ be positive integers. In 1946, ErdH{o}s and Niven proved that there are only finitely many positive integers $n$ for which one or more of the elementary symmetric functions of $1/b,1/(a+b),\mathrm{...},1/(an-a+b)$ are integers. In this paper, we show that for any integer $k$ with $1leklen$, the $k$-th elementary symmetric function of $1/b,1/(a+b),\mathrm{...},1/(an-a+b)$ is not an integer except that either $b=n=k=1$ and $age1$, or $a=b=1,n=3$ and $k=2$. This refines the ErdH{o}s-Niven theorem and answers an open problem raised by Chen and Tang in 2012.

Full work available at URL: https://arxiv.org/abs/1311.1389

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zbMATH Keywords

harmonic seriesarithmetic progression\(p\)-adic valuationelementary symmetric function

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Arithmetic progressions (11B25) Primes in congruence classes (11N13)

Cited In (15)

• Some properties of partial sums of the harmonic series
• On the \(p\)-adic properties of Stirling numbers of the first kind
• Recursions associated to trapezoid, symmetric and rotation symmetric functions over Galois fields
• On the denseness of certain reciprocal power sums
• Multiple harmonic sums and multiple harmonic star sums are (nearly) never integers
• 2-adic valuations of Stirling numbers of the first kind
• The elementary symmetric functions of a reciprocal polynomial sequence
• The elementary symmetric functions of a reciprocal polynomial sequence
• A generalization of a theorem of Nagell
• On the elementary symmetric functions of \(1, 1/ 2,\dots ,1/n\)
• Multiple reciprocal sums and multiple reciprocal star sums of polynomials are almost never integers
• On the integrality of the elementary symmetric functions of \(1, 1/3,\dots, 1/(2n - 1)\)
• A generalisation of a theorem of Erdős and Niven
• On the integrality of the first and second elementary symmetric functions of \(1,1/2^{s_2},\dots,1/n^{s_n}\)
• On the \(p\)-adic valuation of Stirling numbers of the first kind

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