Journal of Integer Sequences, Vol. 28 (2025), Article 25.3.1

On the Sum of a Squarefree Integer and a Power of Two


Christian Hercher
Institut für Mathematik
Europa-Universität Flensburg
Auf dem Campus 1c
24943 Flensburg
Germany

Abstract:

Erdős conjectured that every odd number greater than one can be expressed as the sum of a squarefree number and a power of two. Subsequently, Odlyzko and McCranie provided numerical verification of this conjecture up to 107 and 1.4 · 109. In this paper, we extend the verification to all odd integers up to 250, thereby improving the previous bound by a factor of more than 8 · 105. Our approach employs a highly parallelized algorithm implemented on a GPU, which significantly accelerates the process. We provide details of the algorithm and present novel heuristic computations and numerical findings, including the smallest odd numbers < 250 that require a higher power of two than all smaller ones in their representation.


Full version:  pdf,    dvi,    ps,    latex    


(Concerned with sequence A377587.)


Received March 17 2025; revised versions received April 13 2025; April 14 2025. Published in Journal of Integer Sequences, April 14 2025.


Return to Journal of Integer Sequences home page