Palindromic Prime

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A palindromic prime is a number that is simultaneously palindromic and prime. The first few (base-10) palindromic primes are 2, 3, 5, 7, 11, 101, 131, 151, 181, 191, 313, 353, 373, 383, 727, 757, 787, ... (OEIS A002385; Beiler 1964, p. 228). The number of palindromic primes less than a given number are illustrated in the plot above. The number of palindromic numbers having n=1, 2, 3, ... digits are 4, 1, 15, 0, 93, 0, 668, 0, 5172, 0, ... (OEIS A016115; De Geest) and the total number of palindromic primes less than 10, 10^2, 10^3, ... are 4, 5, 20, 20, 113, 113, 781, ... (OEIS A050251). Gupta (2009) has computed the numbers of palindromic primes up to 10^(21).

The following table lists palindromic primes in various small bases.

bOEISbase-b palindromic primes
2A11769711, 101, 111, 10001, 11111, 1001001, 1101011, ...
3A1176982, 111, 212, 12121, 20102, 22122, ...
4A1176992, 3, 11, 101, 131, 323, 10001, 11311, 12121, ...
5A1177002, 3, 111, 131, 232, 313, 414, 10301, 12121, 13331, ...
6A1177012, 3, 5, 11, 101, 111, 141, 151, 515, ...
7A1177022, 3, 5, 131, 212, 313, 515, 535, 616, ...
8A0063412, 3, 5, 7, 111, 131, 141, 161, 323, ...
9A1177032, 3, 5, 7, 131, 151, 212, 232, 272, 414, ...
10A0023852, 3, 5, 7, 11, 101, 131, 151, 181, ...

Banks et al. (2004) proved that almost all palindromes (in any base) are composite, with the precise statement being

 P(x)∼O((N(x)lnlnlnx)/(lnlnx)),
(1)

where P(x) is the number of palindromic primes <=x and N(x) is the number of palindromic numbers <=x.

The sum of the reciprocals of the palindromic primes converges to  approx 1.3240 (OEIS A118064) a number sometimes known as Honaker's constant (Rivera), where the value computed using all palindromic primes <=10^(11) is 1.32398... (M. Keith).

The first few palindromic primes formed by taking n digits in the decimal expansion of pi and reflecting about the last digit are 3, 313, 31415926535897932384626433833462648323979853562951413, ... (OEIS A039954; Caldwell). These numbers are prime for n=1, 2, 27, 151, 461, 2056, ... (OEIS A119351), with no others for n<=56755 (E. W. Weisstein, Mar. 21, 2009).

The first few n such that both n and p_n are palindromic (where p_n is the nth prime) are given by 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 8114118, ... (OEIS A046942; Rivera), corresponding to p_n of 2, 3, 5, 7, 11, 143787341 (OEIS A046941; Rivera).

Palindromic primes of the form

 pp_n(x)=x^n+(x+1)^n
(2)

for n=2 include 5, 181, 313, 3187813, ... (OEIS A050239; De Geest, Rivera), which occur for x=1, 9, 12, 1262, ... (OEIS A050236; De Geest, Rivera), with no others for n<10^(20) and x<2×10^(10) (De Geest).

As of Nov. 2014, the largest proven palindromic prime is

 P=10^(474500)+999·10^(237249)+1,
(3)

which has 474501 decimal digits (http://primes.utm.edu/top20/page.php?id=53#records).

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