Super congruences involving alternating harmonic sums modulo prime powers

TL;DR

This paper extends harmonic sum congruences involving prime powers by establishing new alternating harmonic sum congruences modulo prime powers, revealing connections with Bernoulli numbers and generalizing previous results.

Contribution

It introduces novel combinational congruences for alternating harmonic sums involving prime powers, expanding the scope of harmonic sum congruences and their relation to Bernoulli numbers.

Findings

Established a congruence for alternating harmonic sums modulo prime powers.

Derived new relations involving Bernoulli numbers for sums with multiple variables.

Generalized previous harmonic sum congruences to include alternating signs and higher dimensions.

Abstract

In 2014, Wang and Cai established the following harmonic congruence for any odd prime $p$ and positive integer $r$, \begin{equation*} \sum\limits_{i+j+k=p^{r}\atop{i,j,k\in \mathcal{P}_{p}}}\frac{1}{ijk}\equiv-2p^{r-1}B_{p-3} (\bmod p^{r}), \end{equation*} where $\mathcal{P}_{n}$ denote the set of positive integers which are prime to $n$. In this note, we establish a combinational congruence of alternating harmonic sums for any odd prime $p$ and positive integers $r$, \begin{equation*} \sum\limits_{i+j+k=p^{r}\atop{i,j,k\in \mathcal{P}_{p}}}\frac{(-1)^{i}}{ijk} \equiv \frac{1}{2}p^{r-1}B_{p-3} (\bmod p^{r}). \end{equation*} For any odd prime $p\geq 5$ and positive integers $r$, we have \begin{align} &4\sum\limits_{i_{1}+i_{2}+i_{3}+i_{4}=2p^{r}\atop{i_{1}, i_{2}, i_{3}, i_{4}\in \mathcal{P}_{p}}}\frac{(-1)^{i_{1}}}{i_{1}i_{2}i_{3}i_{4}}+3\sum\limits_{i_{1}+i_{2}+i_{3}+i_{4}=2p^{r}\atop{i_{1}, i_{2}, i_{3}, i_{4}\in \mathcal{P}_{p}}}\frac{(-1)^{i_{1}+i_{2}}}{i_{1}i_{2}i_{3}i_{4}} \nonumber\\&\equiv\begin{cases} \frac{216}{5}pB_{p-5}\pmod{p^{2}}, if r=1, \\ \frac{36}{5}p^{r}B_{p-5}\pmod{p^{r+1}}, if r>1. \\ \end{cases}\nonumber \end{align} For any odd prime $p> 5$ and positive integers $r$, we have \begin{align} &\sum\limits_{i_{1}+i_{2}+i_{3}+i_{4}+i_{5}=2p^{r}\atop{i_{1}, i_{2}, i_{3}, i_{4}, i_{5}\in \mathcal{P}_{p}}}\frac{(-1)^{i_{1}}}{i_{1}i_{2}i_{3}i_{4}i_{5}}+2\sum\limits_{i_{1}+i_{2}+i_{3}+i_{4}+i_{5}=2p^{r}\atop{i_{1}, i_{2}, i_{3}, i_{4}, i_{5}\in \mathcal{P}_{p}}}\frac{(-1)^{i_{1}+i_{2}}}{i_{1}i_{2}i_{3}i_{4}i_{5}} \nonumber\\&\equiv\begin{cases} 12B_{p-5}\pmod{p}, if r=1,\\ 6p^{r-1}B_{p-5}\pmod{p^{r}}, if r>1. \end{cases}\nonumber \end{align}