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Research notes on every problem, and a library of the papers behind them. Built from the open erdos repository.

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Claim. M. A. Bennett and S. Siksek, A conjecture of Erdős, supersingular primes and short character sums, Ann. of Math. (2) 191 (2020), no. 2, 355--392 (preprint arXiv:1709.01022, 4 September 2017). Theorem 2 (printed p. 357) reads: "There is an effectively computable absolute constant k0k_0 such that if k≥k0k\geq k_0 is a positive integer, then any solution in integers to equation (2) with prime exponent ℓ\ell satisfies either y=0y=0 or d=0d=0 or ℓ≤exp⁡(10k)\ell\leq\exp(10^k)." Equation (2) is n(n+d)⋯(n+(k−1)d)=yℓn(n+d)\cdots(n+(k-1)d)=y^\ell with gcd⁡(n,d)=1\gcd(n,d)=1. A positive progression has d≠0d\ne0 and y≠0y\ne0, so for every k≥k0k\ge k_0 the product is never an ℓ\ellth power with ℓ\ell prime and ℓ>exp⁡(10k)\ell>\exp(10^k), nor any power whose exponent has such a prime factor. The constant k0k_0 is effective but not computed. With Faltings's theorem the paper also gets finitely many solutions for each such kk, which settles no further instance. Library home: bennett_2020_conjecture_erdos_supersingular_primes_short.

Covers. Every length k≥k0k\ge k_0, every dd, and every exponent with a prime factor ℓ>exp⁡(10k)\ell>\exp(10^k), for Problem 672. Not covered: smaller exponents, and lengths below k0k_0.

Depends on. Nothing in this wiki; the result rests on the cited paper.

Acceptance. Refereed: Annals of Mathematics (2) 191 (2020), no. 2; the Crossref record dates the issue to March 2020. The page is named by the arXiv posting of 4 September 2017. The site's commentary credits the theorem, but the site labels the problem VERIFIABLE, an open label, so the commentary is not reviewed evidence.