On the Reciprocal of the Binary Generating Function for the Sum of Divisors
Joshua N. Cooper
Department of Mathematics
University of South Carolina
Columbia, SC 29208
USA
Alexander W. N. Riasanovsky
Department of Mathematics
University of Pennsylvania
Philadelphia, PA 19104
USA
Abstract:
If A is a set of natural numbers containing 0,
then there is a unique nonempty
"reciprocal" set B of natural numbers (containing 0)
such that every positive integer
can be written in the form a + b,
where a ∈ A and b ∈ B,
in an even number of ways.
Furthermore, the generating functions for A and
B over F2 are reciprocals in
F2[[q]].
We consider the reciprocal set B for the set
A containing 0 and all integers such that
σ(n) is odd, where σ(n) is the sum of all the positive divisors of n. This problem
is motivated by Euler’s pentagonal number theorem, a corollary of which is that the
set of natural numbers n so that the number p(n) of partitions of an integer n is odd
is the reciprocal of the set of generalized pentagonal numbers (integers of the form
k(3k ± 1)/2, where k is a natural number). An old (1967) conjecture of Parkin and
Shanks is that the density of integers n so that p(n) is odd (equivalently, even) is 1/2.
Euler also found that σ(n) satisfies an almost identical recurrence as that given by the pentagonal number theorem, so we hope to shed light on the Parkin-Shanks conjecture by computing the density of the reciprocal of the set containing the natural numbers
with σ(n) odd (σ(0) = 1 by convention). We conjecture this particular density is 1/32
and prove that it lies between 0 and 1/16.
We finish with a few surprising connections between certain Beatty sequences and the sequence of integers n for which σ(n) is odd.
Full version: pdf,
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(Concerned with sequences
A000203
A001952
A001954
A003151
A003152
A028982
A052002
A192628
A192717
A192718
A197878
A215247.)
Received August 10 2012;
revised version received January 24 2013.
Published in Journal of Integer Sequences, January 26 2013.
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