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A Study of a Curious Arithmetic Function Bakir Farhi
Department of Mathematics
University of Béjaia
Béjaia
Algeria
mailto:bakir.farhi@gmail.combakir.farhi@gmail.com

in

Abstract:

In this note, we study the arithmetic function $ f : \mathbb{Z}_+^*
\rightarrow \mathbb{Q}_+^*$ defined by $ f(2^k \ell) = \ell^{1 -
k}$ ( $ \forall k , \ell \in \mathbb{N}$, $ \ell$ odd). We show several important properties about this function, and we use them to obtain some curious results involving the $ 2$-adic valuation. In the last section of the paper, we generalize those results to any other $ p$-adic valuation.



Jeffrey Shallit 2012-01-28