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 REPUNITS AND LPF COMPUTATIONS 
By Jason Earls, author of:
 Mathematical Bliss
and
Concrete Primes
 
available here (please buy one!):http://www.lulu.com/content/paperback-book/mathematical-bliss/6542538http://www.lulu.com/content/paperback-book/concrete-primes/7277732Repunit numbers are simply: 1, 11, 111, 1111, 11111, ... a sequence of repeating ones thatincrease by 1 each time. They have a nice and succinct formula: R(n)=(10^n-1)/9 andhave been one of my personal favorite classes of numbers for many years now.1,11,111,1111,11111,111111,1111111,11111111,111111111,1111111111,11111111111,111111111111,1111111111111,....Repunits are important in the study of ‘repeating parts’ in decimal expansions of fractions (which I won’t delve into in this article); plus many prime hunters havesearched through repunits looking for primes (the great amateur number theorist, primehunter extraordinairre, and retired electrical engineer Harvey Dubner’s first primeproject was searching for repunit primes with his personal computer). Here are all of thecurrently known values of n such that Repunit_n or R(n) is prime:
2, 19, 23, 317, 1031, 49081, 86453, 109297, 270343,
Keep in mind, the larger values above correspond only to “probable primes” (meaningthey have passed a Fermat primality test but have not been rigorously proven prime dueto their size, Google ‘primality proving’ for more information). Although we are going to be dealing with primality in this article, we will be approachingit from a slightly different angle than normal. We’ll be looking for the ‘largest primefactors’ of repunits and modified repunits. The reason these largest prime factors (LPFsfor short) will be “interesting” is that most of them possess unusual decimal expansions,in the sense that certain digits repeat more often than in other primes -- remember,‘largest prime factors’ are of course primes. (An interesting bit of computational numbertheory history involving LPFs is that the very first program ever ran on an electronicdigital computer that used ‘stored programs’ was one that found the largest prime factorof a number using a brute-force process; this occured at Manchester University in Juneof 1948 and the computer was called “Mark I.”)Here is what I mean by the largest prime factor of a repunit:
 
111111111 = 3*3*37*333667 
See the 333667 above? That’s the largest prime factor and notice how many of its digitsrepeat.Here is the sequence of largest prime factors for the first 40 repunits:1, 11, 37, 101, 271, 37, 4649, 137, 333667, 9091, 513239, 9901, 265371653, 909091,2906161, 5882353, 5363222357, 333667, 1111111111111111111, 27961, 10838689, 513239,11111111111111111111111, 99990001, 182521213001, 1058313049, 440334654777631,121499449, 77843839397, 2906161, 57336415063790604359, 5882353,1344628210313298373, 21993833369, 102598800232111471, 999999000001,2212394296770203368013, 1111111111111111111, 900900900900990990990991,5964848081, An interesting series of primes indeed. But you may be wondering what this sequence of numbers is good for? Well, a real mathematician might be able to use them to prove afew thereoms about repeating decimal expansions in fractions, but since I am only an‘experimental mathematician’ I have to think of other ways they can be useful, or I cansimply appreciate their visual properties on a Zen-like aesthetic level and meditate onthe integers until I reach a state of transcendental omniscient bliss while achieving afeeling of ‘mystical transport,’ and the latter is usually what ends up happening, which ismore than good enough for me, baby. Oohh yeahhh.Now let’s consider a different class of numbers. A modified version of the repunits:R(n)*n. I will call them repdigits even though that isn’t truly their technical definition.1,22,333,4444,55555,666666,7777777,88888888,999999999,11111111110,122222222221,1333333333332,14444444444443,155555555555554,1666666666666665,17777777777777776,188888888888888887,1999999999999999998,21111111111111111109,222222222222222222220,But this isn’t good enough since the LPFs of these numbers are still the same as those forrepunits since the multiplication by n simply adds one (or two; or a few) small factorsand hence the largest prime factor does not change. So to acquire different (andinteresting) LPFs we need to make another modification. How about this: R(n)*n+n, which produces:
 
2,24,336,4448,55560,666672,7777784,88888896,1000000008,11111111120,122222222232,1333333333344,14444444444456,155555555555568,1666666666666680,17777777777777792,188888888888888904,2000000000000000016,21111111111111111128,222222222222222222240,There we go. And here are their largest prime factors:2, 3, 7, 139, 463, 43, 138889, 154321, 167, 1298027, 462962963, 8331667, 6038647343,258233, 833316667, 138888888888889, 22278185023, 166667, 2782842551221,1986965506278811, 4206628807, 83686681651, 168902941613631143,833333316666667, 6293985601, 174910643, 518026277401, 27005767441,23519935674229, 45251558227, 52631217731010940851227, 5550761984115217463137,482469699949, 28389014842723721, 7397583416630122604588513861,83333333333166666666667, 506468020638581565208195043, 2777300544524459,76967774359459327, 124853279104459,Pretty interesting series of primes, no? Examine the decimal expansions carefully. They are unusual in the sense of their repeated digital behavior. Look at the ones withrepeating 3s and 6s. Look at the ones with many repeating 8s. Notice they have otherslightly repeating patterns as well, such as 629629... etc. At the end of this article I haveincluded a table of n and the largest prime factors of R(n)*n+n in case you’d like to seemore terms. When examining it, you will notice that primes of the form 13888...8889appear. Could this be a relatively important class of prime number that should be more well-known to the world and other mathematicians? I like to think so, even if it’s not.Let’s make a formula for this prime and search for more in case anyone ever needs them.I like to help humanity and the mathematical community in this way. Call it my littlecontribution to culture and science.First, let’s derive a formula for numbers of the form 13888...8889. The most obvious way would be to simply break down the number into its major components and do someaddition and multiplication like so (we’ll call these “Hypnotic” primes, I don’t really know why):
H(n)=13*10^n+((10^n-1)/9)*8+1
 Which does give us the numbers we desire, but the formula is too messy and should besimplified to this:
of 00

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