Wagstaff prime

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

In mathematics, a Wagstaff prime is a certain kind of prime number. It is of the form

(2^p + 1) / 3

for a prime number p is called a Wagstaff prime; they are related to the New Mersenne conjecture. The first few Wagstaff primes (sequence A000979 in OEIS) are:

3, 11, 43, 683, 2731, 43691, 174763, 2796203, 715827883, 2932031007403

Wagstaff primes have applications in cryptology.

Wagstaff primes are named after mathematician Samuel S. Wagstaff Jr.. The prime pages credit François Morain for christening them in a lecture at the Eurocrypt 1990 conference.

[edit] External links

• Renaud Lifchitz: "An efficient probable prime test for numbers of the form (2^p+1)/3"