Research notes on every problem, and a library of the papers behind them. Built from the open erdos repository.
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Claim. The first question of Problem 436 has answer yes: for every . The result is Theorem 1 of A. Hildebrand, On consecutive th power residues. II, Michigan Math. J. 38 (1991), no. 2, 241--253, DOI 10.1307/mmj/1029004331 (received 28 March 1990). The paper defines as the least such that are all th power residues modulo , which exists for every large prime by a theorem of Brauer, and , the problem's definition. Theorem 1 (p. 241) states that for all positive integers , and the paper restates it: for each there is a constant such that every sufficiently large prime has a pair of consecutive th power residues with . No explicit bound for is given.
The proof's shape. Theorem 1 is deduced (p. 242) from the paper's Theorem 2: for each there is a constant such that every completely multiplicative function on the positive integers with has a positive integer with . The deduction reduces to primes , since the th power residues modulo are the th power residues for , and builds from a primitive root modulo so that exactly when is a th power residue. The proof of Theorem 2 finds a set of integers in which the quotients of any two members by their greatest common divisor are consecutive, Heath-Brown's special sets, on which takes the value , using the pigeonhole principle, Ramsey's theorem, elementary sieve estimates and estimates for multiplicative functions, as the introduction lists. Part I of the paper (Monatsh. Math. 102 (1986), 103--114) proved the case of prime ; this page covers that case, so Part I has no page of its own. Before the theorem, was known finite for by machine computation, with the exact values the problem page lists.
Covers. The first question, answered yes: is finite for every . It does not cover the second question, whether is finite for every odd , or the third, how and grow with .
Depends on. No page of this wiki.
Acceptance. Refereed: the Michigan Mathematical Journal, a refereed
journal, cited with its venue above. The site's commentary credits the theorem
with the first question, but the site labels the problem OPEN, so the credit
is not reviewed evidence. The page is dated by the publication year, since
the record gives only the year. The proof of Theorem 2 (sections 2 to 4 of the
paper) carries no independent review in this corpus.