Research notes on every problem, and a library of the papers behind them. Built from the open erdos repository.
Updated
Claim. Theorem 1 of John B. Friedlander, Florian Luca and Mihai Stoiciu, On the irrationality of a divisor function series, Integers 7 (2007), #A31, 9 pp., states that
is irrational, with no hypothesis: the case of
Problem 252. The argument is the
classical one: assume the sum is , multiply by for a
well-chosen large , and trap the fractional part strictly between and
; the choice of needs primes for which a shifted value is an
almost-prime of a prescribed shape, supplied in the interval by a
version of Chen's theorem stated as the paper's Theorem 3. The source card
friedlander_2007_irrationality_divisor_function_series
holds the journal's PDF (the first paper link; the second is the journal's
Zenodo deposit). The paper's Theorem 2, the irrationality of every case under
the prime -tuples conjecture, is the conditional claim on
its own page.
A note added in March 2007 records that Schlage-Puchta obtained the same two
results independently, with a rather different sieve proof for
(his claim page),
and formal-conjectures tags its variant erdos_252.variants.k_eq_three
research solved, citing both papers.
Covers. The case only: is irrational. Nothing unconditional about any .
Acceptance. Refereed: Integers, volume 7 (2007), article A31, received
8 December 2006, revised 20 March 2007, accepted 12 June 2007 and published
3 July 2007, as the paper's header prints; Integers is a refereed electronic
journal. The site labels the problem OPEN, so its curator's remark crediting
this paper and Schlage-Puchta with the case is commentary on an open
problem and not acceptance, and no reviewed evidence is listed. The proof
is not checked here.
Depends on. Nothing in this wiki.