Arratia's divisibility conjecture for prime factors of a uniform random integer

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Let N(n)N(n) be uniformly distributed on {1,…,n}\{1,\ldots,n\}, with prime factorization

N(n)=∏p≤npCp(n).N(n)=\prod_{p\le n}p^{C_p(n)}.

For each prime p≤np\le n, let ZpZ_p be an independent geometric random variable with parameter 1p\frac{1}{p} and range Z≥0\mathbb{Z}_{\ge 0}, and define

M(n)=∏p≤npZp.M(n)=\prod_{p\le n}p^{Z_p}.

A coupling of M(n)M(n) and N(n)N(n) is a joint construction preserving their respective distributions. Arratia's conjecture. For all n≥1n\ge 1, it is possible to construct N(n)N(n), M(n)M(n), and a prime P(n)P(n) such that

N(n)∣M(n)P(n)N(n)\mid M(n)P(n)

always. Equivalently, there exists a coupling such that

∑p≤n(Cp(n)−Zp)+≤1\sum_{p\le n}\left(C_p(n)-Z_p\right)^+\le 1

always. The conjecture proposes an especially strong coupling between the dependent prime-factor exponent process of a uniform random integer and its independent geometric limit process; the supplied text does not state whether it has been resolved.

References

Primary source

Joseph Squillace, “On the Dependence of the Component Counting Process of a Discrete Uniform Random Variable”, arXiv:1910.12841 (2020).

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