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The Distribution of Totatives

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Jam Germain*
Affiliation:
Département de Mathématiques et statistique, Université de Montréal, CP 6128 succ. Centre-Ville, Montréal, QC, H3C 3J7 e-mail: germain@dms.umontreal.ca
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Abstract

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The integers coprime to $n$ are called the totatives of $n$. D. H. Lehmer and Paul Erdős were interested in understanding when the number of totatives between $in/k$ and $\left( i\,+1 \right)n/k$ are $1/k\text{th}$ of the total number of totatives up to $n$. They provided criteria in various cases. Here we give an “if and only if” criterion which allows us to recover most of the previous results in this literature and to go beyond, as well to reformulate the problem in terms of combinatorial group theory. Our criterion is that the above holds if and only if for every odd character $\chi \,\left( \bmod \,\kappa \right)\,\left( \text{where}\,\kappa :=k/\gcd \left( k,\,n/{{\Pi }_{p|n}}p \right) \right)$ there exists a prime $p={{p}_{\chi }}$ dividing $n$ for which $\chi \left( p \right)=1.$

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Mathematical Society 2005

References

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