A257348 Repeatedly applying the map x -> sigma(x) partitions the natural numbers into a number of disjoint trees; sequence gives the (conjectural) list of minimal representatives of these trees.

1, 2, 5, 16, 19, 27, 29, 33, 49, 50, 52, 66, 81, 85, 105, 146, 147, 163, 170, 189, 197, 199, 218, 226, 243, 262, 303, 315, 343, 424, 430, 438, 453, 461, 463, 469, 472, 484, 489, 513, 530, 550, 584, 677, 722, 746, 786, 787, 804, 813, 821, 831, 842, 859, 867, 876, 892, 903, 914, 916, 937, 977, 982, 988, 990, 1029

Offset: 1

Author

N. J. A. Sloane, May 01 2015, following a suggestion from Kerry Mitchell

Keywords

• nonn
• hard

Comments

Very little is known for certain. Even the trajectories of 2 (A007497) and 5 (A051572) under repeated application of the map x -> sigma(x) (cf. A000203) are only conjectured to be disjoint.

The thousand-term b-file (up to 141441) has been checked to correspond to disjoint trees for 265 iterations of sigma on each term, and every non-term n < 141441 merges (in at most 21 iterations) with an earlier iteration sequence. - Hans Havermann, Nov 22 2019

Rather than trees we mean connected components of the graphs with edges x -> sigma(x). The number 1 is a fixed point, i.e., a cycle of length 1 under iterations of sigma, it is not part of a tree. But since sigma(n) > n for n > 1 there are no other cycles. - M. F. Hasler, Nov 21 2019

References

• Kerry Mitchell, Posting to Math Fun Mailing List, Apr 30 2015

Links

• Hans Havermann, Table of n, a(n) for n = 1..1000
• G. L. Cohen and H. J. J. te Riele, Iterating the sum-of-divisors function, Experimental Mathematics, 5 (1996), pp. 91-100. See Eq. (4.2).

Crossrefs

Cf. A000203 (sigma), A007497 (trajectory of 2), A051572 (trajectory of 5), A257349 (trajectory of 16).

Cf. A216200 (number of disjoint trees up to n); A257669 and A257670: size and smallest number of subtree rooted in n.

Extensions

More terms from Hans Havermann, May 02 2015