Egyptian fractions

Egyptian fractions are what we know as unit fractions that are of the form 1/n - with the exception, by the Egyptians, of 2/3. Egyptian fractions have actually played an important part in mathematics history with its primary roots in number theory. This paper will trace the history of Egyptian fractions by starting at the time of the Egyptians, working our way to Fibonacci, a geologist named Farey, continued fractions, Diophantine equations, and unsolved problems in number theory

Algebraic Properties of a Family of Generalized Laguerre Polynomials

We study the algebraic properties of Generalized Laguerre Polynomials for negative integral values of the parameter. For integers r,n≥0 , we conjecture that L(−1−n−r)n(x)=∑nj=0(n−j+rn−j)xj/j! is a \Q -irreducible polynomial whose Galois group contains the alternating group on n letters. That this is so for r=n was conjectured in the 1950\u27s by Grosswald and proven recently by Filaseta and Trifonov. It follows from recent work of Hajir and Wong that the conjecture is true when r is large with respect to n≥5 . Here we verify it in three situations: i) when n is large with respect to r , ii) when r≤8 , and iii) when n≤4 . The main tool is the theory of p -adic Newton Polygons

Detailed black hole state counting in loop quantum gravity

We give a complete and detailed description of the computation of black hole entropy in loop quantum gravity by employing the most recently introduced number-theoretic and combinatorial methods. The use of these techniques allows us to perform a detailed analysis of the precise structure of the entropy spectrum for small black holes, showing some relevant features that were not discernible in previous computations. The ability to manipulate and understand the spectrum up to the level of detail that we describe in the paper is a crucial step towards obtaining the behavior of entropy in the asymptotic (large horizon area) regime

Exact arithmetic on the Stern–Brocot tree

AbstractIn this paper we present the Stern–Brocot tree as a basis for performing exact arithmetic on rational numbers. There exists an elegant binary representation for positive rational numbers based on this tree [Graham et al., Concrete Mathematics, 1994]. We will study this representation by investigating various algorithms to perform exact rational arithmetic using an adaptation of the homographic and the quadratic algorithms that were first proposed by Gosper for computing with continued fractions. We will show generalisations of homographic and quadratic algorithms to multilinear forms in n variables. Finally, we show an application of the algorithms for evaluating polynomials