Eswarathasan–Levine conjecture on the finiteness of divisible harmonic numbers

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Let Hn=1+12+⋯+1nH_n=1+\frac12+\cdots+\frac1n be the nnth harmonic number. For a prime pp, let νp(a)\nu_p(a) denote the pp-adic valuation of aa, and define

Jp:={n≥1:νp(Hn)≥1}.J_p:=\{n\geq 1:\nu_p(H_n)\geq 1\}.

Thus, JpJ_p consists of those nn for which pp divides the numerator of HnH_n in lowest terms.

Eswarathasan–Levine conjecture. The set JpJ_p is finite for all primes pp.

Eswarathasan and Levine computed JpJ_p for p=3,5,7p=3,5,7 and found it finite in each case. Boyd later established finiteness for all primes p≤547p\leq 547, apart from possibly p∈{83,127,397}p\in\{83,127,397\}; the general conjecture remains open.

References

Primary source

Leonardo Carofiglio, Giacomo Cherubini and Alessandro Gambini, “On Eswarathasan–Levine and Boyd's conjectures for harmonic numbers”, arXiv:2503.15714 (2025).

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