Conjecture on sums of practical and polygonal numbers

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For a natural number s>3s>3, an ss-gonal number is a number in the corresponding polygonal-number sequence, and a practical number is a natural number whose positive integers up to it can be represented as sums of distinct divisors. A natural number is sufficiently large if all natural numbers beyond some threshold have the stated property.

Conjecture on practical and polygonal sums. If s>3s>3, s≢0(mod12)s \not\equiv 0\pmod{12}, and s≢4(mod12)s \not\equiv 4\pmod{12}, then all sufficiently large natural numbers can be written as a sum of a practical number and an ss-gonal number.

The claim is based on computations of representations by a practical number and an ss-gonal number. The source explicitly notes that it does not hold for other values of ss, so the conjecture as stated is refuted.

References

Primary source

Sai Teja Somu and Duc Van Khanh Tran, “On Sums of Practical Numbers and Polygonal Numbers”, arXiv:2403.13533 (2024).

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