Wall-Sun-Sun prime

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

In mathematics, a Wall-Sun-Sun prime is a certain kind of prime number. A prime p > 5 is called a Wall-Sun-Sun prime if p² divides

F\left(p - \left(\frac{{p}}{{5}}\right)\right)

where F(n) is the nth Fibonacci number and \left(\frac{{a}}{{b}}\right) is the Legendre symbol of a and b.

Wall-Sun-Sun primes are named after D. D. Wall, Zhi Hong Sun and Zhi Wei Sun; Z. H. Sun and Z. W. Sun showed in 1992 that if the first case of Fermat's last theorem was false for a certain prime p, then p would have to be a Wall-Sun-Sun prime. As a result, prior to Andrew Wiles' proof of Fermat's last theorem, the search for Wall-Sun-Sun primes was also the search for a counterexample to this centuries-old conjecture.

No Wall-Sun-Sun primes are known to date; if any exist, they must be > 1014. It has been conjectured that there are infinitely many Wall-Sun-Sun primes, but the conjecture remains unproven.

[edit] See also

[edit] External links

In other languages