On amicable tuples

TL;DR

This paper improves an upper bound on the product of amicable pairs and extends the result to certain amicable tuples, advancing understanding of their finiteness and properties.

Contribution

It provides a tighter upper bound for the product of relatively prime amicable pairs and generalizes the bound to some classes of amicable tuples.

Findings

Improved upper bound: MN < (π^2/6) * 2^{4^K - 2*2^K} for amicable pairs.

Generalized the upper bound to certain classes of amicable tuples.

Confirmed finiteness results for relatively prime amicable pairs with fixed ω(MN).

Abstract

For an integer $k\ge2$, a tuple of $k$ positive integers $(M_i)_{i=1}^{k}$ is called an amicable $k$-tuple if the equation \[ \sigma(M_1)=\cdots=\sigma(M_k)=M_1+\cdots+M_k \] holds. This is a generalization of amicable pairs. An amicable pair is a pair of distinct positive integers each of which is the sum of the proper divisors of the other. Gmelin (1917) conjectured that there is no relatively prime amicable pairs and Artjuhov (1975) and Borho (1974) proved that for any fixed positive integer $K$, there are only finitely many relatively prime amicable pairs $(M,N)$ with $\omega(MN)=K$. Recently, Pollack (2015) obtained an upper bound \[ MN<(2K)^{2^{K^2}} \] for such amicable pairs. In this paper, we improve this upper bound to \[ MN<\frac{\pi^2}{6}2^{4^K-2\cdot 2^K} \] and generalize this bound to some class of general amicable tuples.