Multiple harmonic sums and multiple harmonic star sums are (nearly) never integers

MaRDI QIDQ5384142zbMATH OpenFDO

Authors Roberto Tauraso, Kh. Hessami Pilehrood, T. Hessami Pilehrood

Publication date 21 June 2019

Full work available at URL https://arxiv.org/abs/1606.05722, http://math.colgate.edu/~integers/r10/r10.pdf

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zbMATH Keywords

multiple harmonic sums

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Rational numbers as sums of fractions (11D68)

Abstract: It is well known that the harmonic sum $H_n(1)=su{m}_{k=1}^{n}frac1k$ is never an integer for $n>1$. In 1946, ErdH{o}s and Niven proved that the nested multiple harmonic sum $H_n(1^r)=su{m}_{1le{k}_1<dots<k_{r}len}frac1k_{1}cdots{k}_r$ can take integer values only for a finite number of positive integers $n$. In 2012, Chen and Tang refined this result by showing that $H_n(1^r)$ is an integer only for $(n,r)=(1,1)$ and $(n,r)=(3,2)$. In this paper, we consider the integrality problem for arbitrary multiple harmonic and multiple harmonic star sums and show that none of these sums is an integer with some natural exceptions like those mentioned above.

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