A256147 First repeated number in Sylvester's sequence modulo prime(n).

1, 1, 2, 1, 3, 1, 4, 2, 7, 3, 2, 6, 2, 1, 7, 7, 7, 17, 7, 3, 1, 43, 66, 2, 72, 51, 7, 50, 32, 3, 111, 85, 26, 1, 44, 31, 7, 7, 96, 157, 23, 1, 88, 3, 97, 7

Offset: 1

Author

Alonso del Arte, Mar 16 2015

Keywords

• nonn

Comments

Sylvester's sequence (A000058) is an infinite coprime sequence, a fact that may lead to the incorrect intuition that all primes occur as factors of its terms. It's quite easy to check that no multiple of 5 occurs, since Sylvester's sequence modulo 5 is 2, 3, 2, 3, 2, 3, ...

If a multiple of p occurs in Sylvester's sequence at position j, then A000058(k) == 1 (mod p) for all k > j.

But if no multiple of p occurs in Sylvester's sequence at all, then Sylvester's sequence is fully periodic modulo p or it enters a cycle at some point.

Examples

			a(4) = 1, because the fourth prime is 7 and Sylvester's sequence modulo 7 is 2, 3, 0, 1, 1, 1, ...
a(5) = 3, because the fifth prime is 11 and Sylvester's sequence modulo 11 is 2, 3, 7, 10, 3, 7, 10, 3, 7, 10, ... (3 is the first number repeated).
		

References

• J. J. Sylvester, Postscript to Note on a Point in Vulgar Fractions. American Journal of Mathematics Vol. 3, No. 4 (Dec., 1880): 388 - 389.

Crossrefs

Cf. A007996, A126263, A255595.