François G. Dorais

Research in Logic and Foundations of Mathematics

A Wieferich prime search up to $6.7\times10^{15}$

By F. G. Dorais and D. Klyve
Journal of Integer Sequences 14 (2011), no. 9, art. 11.9.2, 14 p.

A Wieferich prime is a prime such that . Despite several intensive searches, only two Wieferich primes are known: and . This paper describes a new search algorithm for Wieferich primes using double-precision Montgomery arithmetic and a memoryless sieve, which runs significantly faster than previously published algorithms, allowing us to report that there are no other Wieferich primes . Furthermore, our method allowed for the efficent collection of statistical data on Fermat quotients, leading to a strong empirical confirmation of a conjecture of Crandall, Dilcher, and Pomerance. Our methods proved flexible enough to search for new solutions of for other small values of , and to extend the search for Fibonacci-Wieferich primes. We conclude, among other things, that there are no Fibonacci-Wieferich primes .