A factorial prime is a
prime number
A prime number (or a prime) is a natural number greater than 1 that is not a product of two smaller natural numbers. A natural number greater than 1 that is not prime is called a composite number. For example, 5 is prime because the only ways ...
that is one less or one more than a
factorial
In mathematics, the factorial of a non-negative denoted is the product of all positive integers less than or equal The factorial also equals the product of n with the next smaller factorial:
\begin
n! &= n \times (n-1) \times (n-2) \t ...
(all factorials greater than 1 are
even
Even may refer to:
General
* Even (given name), a Norwegian male personal name
* Even (surname)
* Even (people), an ethnic group from Siberia and Russian Far East
** Even language, a language spoken by the Evens
* Odd and Even, a solitaire game w ...
).
The first 10 factorial primes (for ''n'' = 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, 11, 12, 14) are :
:
2 (0! + 1 or 1! + 1),
3 (2! + 1),
5 (3! − 1),
7 (3! + 1),
23 (4! − 1), 719 (6! − 1), 5039 (7! − 1), 39916801 (11! + 1), 479001599 (12! − 1), 87178291199 (14! − 1), ...
''n''! − 1 is prime for :
:''n'' = 3, 4, 6, 7, 12, 14, 30, 32, 33, 38, 94, 166, 324, 379, 469, 546, 974, 1963, 3507, 3610, 6917, 21480, 34790, 94550, 103040, 147855, 208003, ... (resulting in 27 factorial primes)
''n''! + 1 is prime for :
:''n'' = 0, 1, 2, 3, 11, 27, 37, 41, 73, 77, 116, 154, 320, 340, 399, 427, 872, 1477, 6380, 26951, 110059, 150209, 288465, 308084, 422429, ... (resulting in 24 factorial primes - the prime 2 is repeated)
No other factorial primes are known .
When both ''n''! + 1 and ''n''! − 1 are
composite
Composite or compositing may refer to:
Materials
* Composite material, a material that is made from several different substances
** Metal matrix composite, composed of metal and other parts
** Cermet, a composite of ceramic and metallic materials
...
, there must be at least 2''n'' + 1 consecutive composite numbers around ''n''!, since besides ''n''! ± 1 and ''n''! itself, also, each number of form ''n''! ± ''k'' is
divisible
In mathematics, a divisor of an integer n, also called a factor of n, is an integer m that may be multiplied by some integer to produce n. In this case, one also says that n is a multiple of m. An integer n is divisible or evenly divisible by ...
by ''k'' for 2 ≤ ''k'' ≤ ''n''. However, the necessary length of this gap is asymptotically smaller than the average composite run for
integer
An integer is the number zero (), a positive natural number (, , , etc.) or a negative integer with a minus sign (−1, −2, −3, etc.). The negative numbers are the additive inverses of the corresponding positive numbers. In the language ...
s of similar size (see
prime gap
A prime gap is the difference between two successive prime numbers. The ''n''-th prime gap, denoted ''g'n'' or ''g''(''p'n'') is the difference between the (''n'' + 1)-th and the
''n''-th prime numbers, i.e.
:g_n = p_ - p_n.\
W ...
).
See also
*
Primorial prime In mathematics, a primorial prime is a prime number of the form ''pn''# ± 1, where ''pn''# is the primorial of ''pn'' (i.e. the product of the first ''n'' primes).
Primality tests show that
: ''pn''# − 1 is prime for ''n ...
External links
*
The Top Twenty: Factorial primesfrom the
Prime Pages The PrimePages is a website about prime numbers maintained by Chris Caldwell at the University of Tennessee at Martin.
The site maintains the list of the "5,000 largest known primes", selected smaller primes of special forms, and many "top twenty" ...
Factorial Prime Searchfrom
PrimeGrid
PrimeGrid is a volunteer computing project that searches for very large (up to world-record size) prime numbers whilst also aiming to solve long-standing mathematical conjectures. It uses the Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing ...
References
{{Prime number classes, state=collapsed
Integer sequences
Classes of prime numbers
Factorial and binomial topics