They constitute the comparatively rare instances where the strict converse ofFermat's Little Theorem does not hold. This fact precludes the use of that theorem as an absolute test ofprimality.[4]
The Carmichael numbers form the subsetK1 of theKnödel numbers.
The Carmichael numbers were named after the American mathematicianRobert Carmichael byNicolaas Beeger, in 1950.Øystein Ore had referred to them in 1948 as numbers with the "Fermat property", or "F numbers" for short.[5]
However, no Carmichael number is either anEuler–Jacobi pseudoprime or astrong pseudoprime to every base relatively prime to it[6]so, in theory, either an Euler or a strong probable prime test could prove that a Carmichael number is, in fact, composite.
Arnault[7]gives a 397-digit Carmichael number that is astrong pseudoprime to allprime bases less than 307:
is a 131-digit prime. is the smallest prime factor of, so this Carmichael number is also a (not necessarily strong) pseudoprime to all bases less than.
As numbers become larger, Carmichael numbers become increasingly rare. For example, there are 20,138,200 Carmichael numbers between 1 and 1021 (approximately one in 50 trillion (5·1013) numbers).[8]
An alternative and equivalent definition of Carmichael numbers is given byKorselt's criterion.
Theorem (A. Korselt 1899): A positive composite integer is a Carmichael number if and only if issquare-free, and for allprime divisors of, it is true that.
It follows from this theorem that all Carmichael numbers areodd, since anyeven composite number that is square-free (and hence has only one prime factor of two) will have at least one odd prime factor, and thus results in an even dividing an odd, a contradiction. (The oddness of Carmichael numbers also follows from the fact that is aFermat witness for any even composite number.)From the criterion it also follows that Carmichael numbers arecyclic.[9][10] Additionally, it follows that there are no Carmichael numbers with exactly two prime divisors.
The first seven Carmichael numbers, from 561 to 8911, were all found by the Czech mathematicianVáclav Šimerka in 1885[11] (thus preceding not just Carmichael but also Korselt, although Šimerka did not find anything like Korselt's criterion).[12] His work, published in Czech scientific journalČasopis pro pěstování matematiky a fysiky, however, remained unnoticed.
Václav Šimerka listed the first seven Carmichael numbers
Korselt was the first who observed the basic properties of Carmichael numbers, but he did not give any examples.
That 561 is a Carmichael number can be seen with Korselt's criterion. Indeed, is square-free and, and.The next six Carmichael numbers are (sequenceA002997 in theOEIS):
In 1910, Carmichael himself[13] also published the smallest such number, 561, and the numbers were later named after him.
Jack Chernick[14] proved a theorem in 1939 which can be used to construct asubset of Carmichael numbers. The number is a Carmichael number if its three factors are all prime. Whether this formula produces an infinite quantity of Carmichael numbers is an open question (though it is implied byDickson's conjecture).
Paul Erdős heuristically argued there should be infinitely many Carmichael numbers. In 1994W. R. (Red) Alford,Andrew Granville andCarl Pomerance used a bound onOlson's constant to show that there really do exist infinitely many Carmichael numbers. Specifically, they showed that for sufficiently large, there are at least Carmichael numbers between 1 and.[3]
Löh and Niebuhr in 1992 found some very large Carmichael numbers, including one with 1,101,518 factors and over 16 million digits.This has been improved to 10,333,229,505 prime factors and 295,486,761,787 digits,[16] so the largest known Carmichael number is much greater than thelargest known prime.
Carmichael numbers have at least three prime factors. The first Carmichael numbers with prime factors are (sequenceA006931 in theOEIS):
k
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
The first Carmichael numbers with 4 prime factors are (sequenceA074379 in theOEIS):
i
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
The second Carmichael number (1105) can be expressed as the sum of two squares in more ways than any smaller number. The third Carmichael number (1729) is theHardy-Ramanujan Number: the smallest number that can be expressed as thesum of two cubes (of positive numbers) in two different ways.
Let denote the number of Carmichael numbers less than or equal to. The distribution of Carmichael numbers by powers of 10 (sequenceA055553 in theOEIS):[8]
Regarding the asymptotic distribution of Carmichael numbers, there have been several conjectures. In 1956, Erdős[17] conjectured that there were Carmichael numbers forX sufficiently large. In 1981, Pomerance[20] sharpened Erdős' heuristic arguments to conjecture that there are at least
Carmichael numbers up to, where.
However, inside current computational ranges (such as the count of Carmichael numbers performed by Goutier(sequenceA055553 in theOEIS) up to 1022), these conjectures are not yet borne out by the data; empirically, the exponent is for the highest available count (C(X)=49679870 for X= 1022).
In 2021,Daniel Larsen proved an analogue ofBertrand's postulate for Carmichael numbers first conjectured by Alford, Granville, and Pomerance in 1994.[4][21] Using techniques developed byYitang Zhang andJames Maynard to establish results concerningsmall gaps between primes, his work yielded the much stronger statement that, for any and sufficiently large in terms of, there will always be at least
The notion of Carmichael number generalizes to a Carmichael ideal in anynumber field. For any nonzeroprime ideal in, we have for all in, where is the norm of theideal. (This generalizes Fermat's little theorem, that for all integers when is prime.) Call a nonzero ideal in Carmichael if it is not a prime ideal and for all, where is the norm of the ideal. When is, the ideal isprincipal, and if we let be its positive generator then the ideal is Carmichael exactly when is a Carmichael number in the usual sense.
When is larger than therationals it is easy to write down Carmichael ideals in: for any prime number that splits completely in, the principal ideal is a Carmichael ideal. Since infinitely many prime numbers split completely in any number field, there are infinitely many Carmichael ideals in. For example, if is any prime number that is 1 mod 4, the ideal in theGaussian integers is a Carmichael ideal.
Both prime and Carmichael numbers satisfy the following equality:
A positive composite integer is a Lucas–Carmichael number if and only if issquare-free, and for allprime divisors of, it is true that. The first Lucas–Carmichael numbers are:
Quasi–Carmichael numbers are squarefree composite numbers with the property that for every prime factor of, divides positively with being any integer besides 0. If, these are Carmichael numbers, and if, these are Lucas–Carmichael numbers. The first Quasi–Carmichael numbers are:
Ann-Knödel number for a givenpositive integern is acomposite numberm with the property that eachcoprime tom satisfies. The case are Carmichael numbers.
Carmichael numbers can be generalized using concepts ofabstract algebra.
The above definition states that a composite integern is Carmichaelprecisely when thenth-power-raising functionpn from theringZn of integers modulon to itself is the identity function. The identity is the onlyZn-algebraendomorphism onZn so we can restate the definition as asking thatpn be an algebra endomorphism ofZn.As above,pn satisfies the same property whenevern is prime.
Thenth-power-raising functionpn is also defined on anyZn-algebraA. A theorem states thatn is prime if and only if all such functionspn are algebra endomorphisms.
In-between these two conditions lies the definition ofCarmichael number of order m for any positive integerm as any composite numbern such thatpn is an endomorphism on everyZn-algebra that can be generated asZn-module bym elements. Carmichael numbers of order 1 are just the ordinary Carmichael numbers.
Korselt's criterion can be generalized to higher-order Carmichael numbers, as shown by Howe.
A heuristic argument, given in the same paper, appears to suggest that there are infinitely many Carmichael numbers of orderm, for anym. However, not a single Carmichael number of order 3 or above is known.
^D. H. Lehmer (1976)."Strong Carmichael numbers".J. Austral. Math. Soc.21 (4):508–510.doi:10.1017/s1446788700019364. Lehmer proved that no Carmichael number is an Euler-Jacobi pseudoprime to every base relatively prime to it. He used the termstrong pseudoprime, but the terminology has changed since then. Strong pseudoprimes are a subset of Euler-Jacobi pseudoprimes. Therefore, no Carmichael number is a strong pseudoprime to every base relatively prime to it.
^abPinch, Richard (December 2007). Anne-Maria Ernvall-Hytönen (ed.).The Carmichael numbers up to 1021(PDF). Proceedings of Conference on Algorithmic Number Theory. Vol. 46. Turku, Finland: Turku Centre for Computer Science. pp. 129–131. Retrieved2017-06-26.
^Proof sketch: If is square-free but not cyclic, for two prime factors and of. But if satisfies Korselt then, so by transitivity of the "divides" relation. But is also a factor of, a contradiction.
^Harman, Glyn (2008). "Watt's mean value theorem and Carmichael numbers".International Journal of Number Theory.4 (2):241–248.doi:10.1142/S1793042108001316.MR2404800.