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Niven's constant

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In number theory, Niven's constant, named after Ivan Niven, is the largest exponent appearing in the prime factorization of any natural number n "on average". More precisely, if we define H(1) = 1 and H(n) = the largest exponent appearing in the unique prime factorization of a natural number n > 1, then Niven's constant is given by

lim n 1 n j = 1 n H ( j ) = 1 + k = 2 ( 1 1 ζ ( k ) ) = 1.705211

where ζ(k) is the value of the Riemann zeta function at the point k (Niven, 1969).

In the same paper Niven also proved that

j = 1 n h ( j ) = n + c n + o ( n )

where h(1) = 1, h(n) = the smallest exponent appearing in the unique prime factorization of each natural number n > 1, o is little o notation, and the constant c is given by

c = ζ ( 3 2 ) ζ ( 3 ) ,

and consequently that

lim n 1 n j = 1 n h ( j ) = 1.

References

Niven's constant Wikipedia