3. Maximally Idempotent Integers
If all bipartite factorizations of n are idempotent, we say that n is maximally idempotent.
Let , with all prime. Let . Suppose that is an idempotent factorization. We have
Similarly, for the other two factorizations, we have and . Thus, n is maximally idempotent . For these three conditions to all be true, . For , the only possibility is .
This gives the following theorem:
Theorem 1. Let prime. Let . n is maximally idempotent .
For the system of three nonlinear modular equations above consider the terms . If all of them are , all three equations are satisfied. If exactly two of them are , only one equation is satisfied. If exactly one is , no equations are satisfied. If none are , there are three possibilities: No equations are satisfied, one is satisfied if , or three are satisfied if . Thus, no integer can have exactly two idempotent factorizations.
Since the equations for maximal idempotency are all sums of products of two or more with no duplicates, and that these sums are all , we have the following result:
Theorem 2. Let with all prime, . is maximally idempotent.
The maximally idempotent integer shows the converse of this theorem is false. , and , but , etc.
As shown previously, a Carmichael number C is maximally idempotent .
9. Conclusions and Future Work
We conjecture that, for any square-free , a composite non-Carmichael can be found such that is an idempotent factorization. We have verified this conjecture for all square-free . For certain prime, the resulting can be quite large, requiring the use of heuristic algorithms for these cases. This is work in progress.
Rather than view idempotency as an all-or-nothing property of a bipartite factorization, it may be viewed as a ratio between 0 and 1. In that case, the previous definition of idempotent factorizations could be regarded as indicating full idempotency because all pairs have the desired idempotency property. A value of 0 corresponds to minimal idempotency, in which no non-trivial pairs are functional RSA keys. Values in between indicate the idempotency ratio for a given factorization, based on the fraction of pairs for which .
The pairs that lend idempotency to a factorization of are exactly those for which , where . The desired are then exactly those solutions to the 2-variable system of nonlinear modular equations , where are the prime power factors of L. Determining whether or not such systems have solutions and calculating their exact number are known NP-complete problems. Thus, simple, efficient calculations of idempotency ratios are likely to prove elusive. This is work in progress.
We conjecture that, due to redundancy in the equations for idempotency, no non-maximally idempotent integer n can have exactly one of its factorizations be non-idempotent. No counterexamples below have been found. This suggests the question of the maximum number of idempotent factorizations an integer n with m prime factors can have without being maximally idempotent. Other questions include the asymptotic density of various kinds of idempotent factorizations, calculations of various idempotency ratios, the development of efficient algorithms to find idempotent factorizations, and more rigorous bounds on maximally idempotent integers.
Finding idempotent factorizations connects factoring, graph theory, number theory, complexity theory, and cryptography. They depend on the relationship of products of primes and their immediate predecessors , so necessary and sufficient conditions for their existence beyond their defining equations are likely to prove elusive.
Various files related to idempotent factorizations are available at the Online Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences [
7,
8,
9,
10]. Some of these ideas first appeared in preliminary form in [
11].