On a Generalization of a Lucas’ Result and an Application to the 4-Pascal’s Triangle

Abstract

The Pascal’s triangle is generalized to “the k-Pascal’s triangle” with any integer k ≥ 2 . Let p be any prime number. In this article, we prove that for any positive integers n and e, the n-th row in the p e -Pascal’s triangle consists of integers which are congruent to 1 modulo p if and only if n is of the form p e m − 1 p e − 1 with some integer m ≥ 1 . This is a generalization of a Lucas’ result asserting that the n-th row in the (2-)Pascal’s triangle consists of odd integers if and only if n is a Mersenne number. As an application, we then see that there exists no row in the 4-Pascal’s triangle consisting of integers which are congruent to 1 modulo 4 except the first row. In this application, we use the congruence ( x + 1 ) p e ≡ ( x p + 1 ) p e − 1 ( mod p e ) of binomial expansions which we could prove for any prime number p and any positive integer e. We think that this article is fit for the Special Issue “Number Theory and Symmetry,” since we prove a symmetric property on the 4-Pascal’s triangle by means of a number-theoretical property of binomial expansions.

Keywords

• the pe-pascal’s triangle
• lucas’ result on the pascal’s triangle
• congruences of binomial expansions