Research notes on every problem, and a library of the papers behind them. Built from the open erdos repository.
Updated
Claim. Write for the number of indices with among the divisors , the function of Problem 1100 (the paper calls it ). P. Erdős and G. Tenenbaum, Sur les fonctions arithmétiques liées aux diviseurs consécutifs, J. Number Theory 31 (1989), no. 3, 285--311, prove two bounds that settle the problem's first two questions. Its Corollaire 2 gives the normal order
for almost all , the lower bound from Théorème 3 of the paper and the upper bound from the authors' earlier work; since for almost all , the ratio tends to infinity on a set of density one, which answers the first question in the affirmative. Its Théorème 4 gives the maximal order
a bound Erdős had stated in 1985 [Er85] with a sketch; since is not , there are infinitely many with , and the second question, whether for all , has the answer no. The paper also makes the Erdős--Simonovits upper bound for the squarefree extremal function explicit: its Théorème 1, which it says develops an unpublished argument of Erdős and Simonovits, gives for squarefree with , that is , while its Théorème 2 shows for infinitely many .
Covers. The first question (yes:
for almost all ) and the second question (no: the bound
fails for infinitely many ). The claim value is
answered because the claim answers the first question yes and the second
no. The third question, the
growth of , is not determined: the paper's explicit constant bounds
above by and leaves the gap to the lower
bounds, for which see the consequence of Chevyrev, Searles
and Slinko's theorem drawn on the
problem page and
Ross's pending golden-ratio bound.
The maximal-order question Erdős asked in [Er85], display (27), whether
for every and
large , is not in the site's statement and is not covered; it is the
subject of Korsky's pending claim.
Acceptance. Refereed: the paper appeared in the Journal of Number Theory, volume 31, issue 3 (March 1989), communicated by R. L. Graham and received 10 December 1987; the Crossref record of its DOI gives these data. Read depth: the introduction's numbered theorems, from the author-archive scan (second link); the proofs are not checked. The site's problem page (last edited 19 October 2025) does not cite the paper and lists the problem as open.