Linear combinations of factorial and \(S\)-unit in a ternary recurrence sequence with a double root (Q6155556)

More than 100 years ago, James Cullen studied numbers of the form \(C_{n}=n2^{n}+1\) known as Cullen numbers. There are only 16 known values of \(n\) for which \(C_{n}\) is prime. It is conjectured that there are infinitely many Cullen primes. \textit{C. Hooley} [Applications of sieve methods to the theory of numbers, Cambridge Tracts in Mathematics. 70. (1976; Zbl 0327.10044)] proved that \(C_{n}\) is composite for most \(n\). That is, the number of \(n\) such that \(n \leq x\) and \(C_{n}\) is prime is \(o(x)\) as \(x \rightarrow \infty\). Closely related to Cullen numbers are Woodall numbers of the form \(W_{n}= n2^{n}-1\). \textit{S. G. Sanchez} and \textit{F. Luca} [Ann. Math. Qué. 38, No. 2, 169--188 (2014; Zbl 1361.11007)] investigated Diophantine equations of the form \(u_{n}\pm m!=s\), where \(\{u_{n}\}_{n\geq 0}\) is a binary recurrent sequence of integers, and \( s\) is an S-unit, that is a positive integer whose prime factors are in a finite predetermined set of primes. In particular, they found all the Fibonacci numbers which can be written as a sum or difference between a factorial and a positive integer whose largest prime factor is at most \(7\). In this paper, the above Diophantine equation has been studied but here \(u_{n}\) is a Cullen or Woodall number. It is noted that both \(\{C_{n}\}_{n\geq 0}\) and \(\{W_{n}\}_{n\geq 0}\) are ternary recurrent sequences of characteristic polynomial \((X-2)^{2}(X-1) = X^{3} - 5X^{2} + 8X - 4\). Here, it is shown that if \(u_{n}=n2^{n} \pm 1\), then the largest prime factor of \(u_{n} \pm m!\) for \(n \geq 0, m \geq 2\) tends to infinity with \(\max\{m,n\}\). In particular, the largest \(n\) participating in the equation \(u_{n} \pm m!= 2^{a}3^{b}5^{c}7^{d}\) with \(n \geq 1, m \geq 2\) is \(n = 8\) for which \((8.2^{8}+1)-4!= 3^{4}.5^{2}\).