Sierpiński's Composite Number Theorem
As proved by Sierpiński (1960), there exist infinitely many positive odd numbers
such that
is composite
for every
. Numbers
with this property are called Sierpiński
numbers of the second kind, and analogous numbers with the plus sign replaced
by a minus are called Riesel numbers. It is conjectured
that the smallest value of
for a Sierpiński
number of the second kind is
(although
a handful of smaller candidates remain to be eliminated) and that the smallest Riesel number is
.
SEE ALSO: Cunningham Number,
Proth Number,
Proth Prime,
Riesel Number,
Sierpiński
Number of the Second Kind,
Sierpiński's
Prime Sequence Theorem
REFERENCES:
Ballinger, R. "The Riesel Problem: Definition and Status." https://www.prothsearch.net/rieselprob.html.
Ballinger, R. "The Sierpinski Problem: Definition and Status." https://www.prothsearch.net/sierp.html.
Ballinger, R. and Keller, W. "The Riesel Problem: Search for Remaining Candidates."
https://www.prothsearch.net/rieselsearch.html.
Buell, D. A. and Young, J. "Some Large Primes and the Sierpiński Problem." SRC Tech. Rep. 88004, Supercomputing Research Center, Lanham, MD, 1988.
Helm, L. and Norris, D. "Seventeen or Bust: A Distributed Attack on the Sierpinski
Problem." https://www.seventeenorbust.com/.
Jaeschke, G. "On the Smallest
such that
are Composite." Math.
Comput. 40, 381-384, 1983.
Jaeschke, G. Corrigendum to "On the Smallest
such that
are Composite." Math.
Comput. 45, 637, 1985.
Keller, W. "Factors of Fermat Numbers and Large Primes of the Form
."
Math. Comput. 41, 661-673, 1983.
Keller, W. "Factors of Fermat Numbers and Large Primes of the Form
, II."
Preprint available at https://www.rrz.uni-hamburg.de/RRZ/W.Keller/.
Ribenboim, P. The New Book of Prime Number Records. New York: Springer-Verlag, pp. 357-359,
1996.
Riesel, H. "Några stora primtal." Elementa 39, 258-260,
1956.
Sierpiński, W. "Sur un problème concernant les nombres
."
Elem. d. Math. 15, 73-74, 1960.
Referenced on Wolfram|Alpha:
Sierpiński's
Composite Number Theorem
CITE THIS AS:
Weisstein, Eric W. "Sierpiński's Composite Number Theorem." From MathWorld--A Wolfram Web Resource.
https://mathworld.wolfram.com/SierpinskisCompositeNumberTheorem.html