Browkin's discriminator conjecture

Abstract: Let

q g e 5

be a prime and put

q^{*} = (- 1)^{(q - 1) / 2} c d o t q

. We consider the integer sequence

u_{q} (1), u_{q} (2), l d o t s,

with

u_{q} (j) = (3^{j} - q^{*} (- 1)^{j}) / 4

. No term in this sequence is repeated and thus for each

n

there is a smallest integer

m

such that

u_{q} (1), l d o t s, u_{q} (n)

are pairwise incongruent modulo

m

. We write

D_{q} (n) = m

. The idea of considering the discriminator

D_{q} (n)

is due to Browkin (2015) who, in case

3

is a primitive root modulo

q,

conjectured that the only values assumed by

D_{q} (n)

are powers of

2

and of

q

. We show that this is true for

n e q 5

, but false for infinitely many

q

in case

n = 5

. We also determine

D_{q} (n)

in case 3 is not a primitive root modulo

q

. Browkin's inspiration for his conjecture came from earlier work of Moree and Zumalac'arregui (2016), who determined

D_{5} (n)

for

n g e 1

, thus establishing a conjecture of Salajan. For a fixed prime

q

their approach is easily generalized, but requires some innovations in order to deal with all primes

q g e 7

and all

n g e 1

. Interestingly enough, Fermat and Mirimanoff primes play a special role in this.

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