A certain reciprocal power sum is never an integer

Publication date: 20 December 2018

Abstract: By

(m a t h b b Z^{+})^{i n f t y}

we denote the set of all the infinite sequences

m a t h c a l S = {s_{i}}_{i = 1}^{i n f t y}

of positive integers (note that all the

s_{i}

are not necessarily distinct and not necessarily monotonic). Let

f (x)

be a polynomial of nonnegative integer coefficients. Let

m a t h c a l S_{n} := s_{1}, ..., s_{n}

and

H_{f} (m a t h c a l S_{n}) := s u m_{k = 1}^{n} f r a c 1 f (k)^{s_{k}}

. When

f (x)

is linear, Feng, Hong, Jiang and Yin proved in [A generalization of a theorem of Nagell, Acta Math. Hungari, in press] that for any infinite sequence

m a t h c a l S

of positive integers,

H_{f} (m a t h c a l S_{n})

is never an integer if

n g e 2

. Now let deg

f (x) g e 2

. Clearly,

0 < H_{f} (m a t h c a l S_{n}) < z e t a (2) < 2

. But it is not clear whether the reciprocal power sum

H_{f} (m a t h c a l S_{n})

can take 1 as its value. In this paper, with the help of a result of ErdH{o}s, we use the analytic and

p

-adic method to show that for any infinite sequence

m a t h c a l S

of positive integers and any positive integer

n g e 2

,

H_{f} (m a t h c a l S_{n})

is never equal to 1. Furthermore, we use a result of Kakeya to show that if

f r a c 1 f (k) l e s u m_{i = 1}^{i} n f t y f r a c 1 f (k + i)

holds for all positive integers

k

, then the union set

is dense in the interval

(0, a l p h a_{f})

with

a l p h a_{f} := s u m_{k = 1}^{i n f t y} f r a c 1 f (k)

. It is well known that

when

f (x) = x^{2} + 1

. Our dense result infers that when

f (x) = x^{2} + 1

, for any sufficiently small

v a r e p s i l o n > 0

, there are positive integers

n_{1}

and

n_{2}

and infinite sequences

m a t h c a l S^{(1)}

and

m a t h c a l S^{(2)}

of positive integers such that

1 - v a r e p s i l o n < H_{f} (m a t h c a l S_{n_{1}}^{(1)}) < 1

and

1 < H_{f} (m a t h c a l S_{n_{2}}^{(2)}) < 1 + v a r e p s i l o n

.

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