slug: oeis-a091259-reduced-numerator-mod-three bibkey: oeis2024a091259 doi: null url: https://oeis.org/A091259 triage: theorem motivation_gids:

• D5/S3/Factorization/A091259

The A091259 congruence

Problem

Take the ratio of the divisor sum of cubes to the ordinary divisor sum, reduce it to lowest terms, and read the numerator modulo three. Michel Marcus conjectured on August 11, 2024 that the result is the indicator of a prime-exponent condition: one exactly when every prime congruent to two modulo three occurs to an even exponent, zero otherwise.

Motivation

This is a first-tier recent OEIS conjecture. Direct inspection on September 9, 2026 found it still labelled Conjecture, and the entry is marked easy.

Gap

The prime-exponent criterion is printed on the neighbouring entry, so the statement can be posed without reproving the classical equivalence behind it. What neither entry supplies is the effect of the reduction: cancelling the fraction could consume a factor of three or leave one behind. The searched indexes returned no proof.

Route

At a prime power the ratio of the two divisor sums equals a ratio of values of the quadratic whose roots are the primitive cube roots of unity, with the argument raised one exponent higher in the numerator. In that form the residues are immediate: a prime congruent to two contributes zero at odd exponents and one at even ones; the prime three contributes one on both sides; a prime congruent to one contributes a single factor of three on each side, and the quotients are one modulo three.

The reduction is handled without tracking exponents. If a cross-multiplication relates two pairs and every divisor of the denominator side is one modulo three, then the reduced numerator agrees modulo three with the other numerator. Applied with the denominator side built from the local factors with their threes stripped, this gives the result whatever the cancellation happened to remove.

The adjacent conjecture about which denominators occur is not needed; only its easy direction, that every prime factor of the reduced denominator is one modulo three, and that direction is what the stripped construction supplies.

Falsifier

A positive argument whose reduced numerator modulo three differs from the indicator would contradict the theorem about the defined quantities.

Evidence

• Module: D5/S3/Factorization/A091259.lean.
• Main theorem: a091259_mod_three, for every positive argument.
• The general reduction lemma is reduced_numerator_mod_three; the local classification is localNumerator_mod; the assembly is localNumerator_prod_mod.
• Supporting results include the prime-power ratio identity, the behaviour of the quadratic modulo three, and the stripped-three construction with its divisor property.
• All public results are within the standard three axioms with no sorryAx.
• There is no finite cutoff in the public statement.

The caller verified before dispatching an implementation seat. The congruence held for every argument through three thousand with no violation. The numerator modulo three took only the two values the indicator can take, never the third. The prime-power ratio identity matched for eleven primes at exponents one through six with no mismatch. The four residue cases were checked individually, including that a prime congruent to one leaves a quotient of one modulo three after removing its single factor of three.

Triage

theorem. The congruence is proved for every positive argument. The classical equivalence behind the indicator is not reproved, and the adjacent conjecture about the set of denominators is untouched.

ASSUMED-UNVERIFIED

First-publication priority is not established. The searches do not exclude private or unindexed proofs. The identification with the two OEIS entries is documentary; the kernel verifies the explicitly defined quantities. The seat reported an independent recomputation to twenty thousand; the caller checked to three thousand only.