Andrew Granville: Linear Divisibility sequences (NTWS 127)
Channel: Number Theory Web Seminar
Date: 2023-09-02

Abstract: In 1878, in the first volume of the first mathematics journal published in the US, Edouard Lucas wrote 88 pages (in French) on linear recurrence sequences, placing Fibonacci numbers and other linear recurrence sequences into a broader context. He examined their behaviour locally as well as globally, and asked several questions that influenced much research in the century and a half to come.
In a sequence of papers in the 1930s, Marshall Hall further developed several of Lucas' themes, including studying and trying to classify third order linear divisibility sequences; that is, linear recurrences like the Fibonacci numbers which have the additional property that $F_m$ divides $F_n$ whenever $m$ divides $n$. Because of many special cases, Hall was unable to even conjecture what a  general theorem should look like, and despite developments over the years by various authors, such as Lehmer, Morgan Ward, van der Poorten, Bezivin, Petho, Richard Guy, Hugh Williams,... with higher order linear divisibility sequences, even the formulation of the classification has remained mysterious.
In this talk we present our ongoing efforts to classify all linear divisibility sequences, the key new input coming from a wonderful application of the Schmidt/Schlickewei subspace theorem from the theory of diophantine approximation, due to Corvaja and Zannier.

Link to slides: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1X3dbxRevtpIr2QQ6CVOBE4bzKHYNEvl3

Number Theory Web Seminar: https://www.ntwebseminar.org

Original air date: 
Thursday, April 28, 2022 (8am PDT, 11am EDT, 4pm BST, 5pm CEST, 6pm Israel Daylight Time, 8:30pm Indian Standard Time, 11pm CST)
Friday, April 29, 2022 (1am AEST, 3am NZST)