Eswarathasan–Levine conjecture on infinitely many harmonic primes

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Let Hn=1+12+⋯+1nH_n=1+\frac12+\cdots+\frac1n be the nnth harmonic number. For a prime pp, define

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

where νp\nu_p is the pp-adic valuation. For every p≥5p\geq 5, the set JpJ_p contains p−1p-1, p2−pp^2-p, and p2−1p^2-1. A harmonic prime is a prime pp such that ∣Jp∣=3|J_p|=3.

Eswarathasan–Levine conjecture. There are infinitely many harmonic primes.

The conjecture was suggested by Eswarathasan and Levine. Boyd's probabilistic model gives the quantitative refinement that harmonic primes should have density e−1e^{-1} among all primes; neither this refinement nor the infinitude assertion is established in the source.

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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