### - Art Gallery -

A Higgs prime, named after Denis Higgs, is a prime number with a totient (one less than the prime) that evenly divides the square of the product of the smaller Higgs primes. (This can be generalized to cubes, fourth powers, etc.) To put it algebraically, given an exponent a, a Higgs prime Hpn satisfies

$$\phi(Hp_n)|\prod_{i = 1}^{n - 1} {Hp_i}^a\mbox{ and }Hp_n > Hp_{n - 1}$$

where Φ(x) is Euler's totient function.

For squares, the first few Higgs primes are 2, 3, 5, 7, 11, 13, 19, 23, 29, 31, 37, 43, 47, ... (sequence A007459 in the OEIS). So, for example, 13 is a Higgs prime because the square of the product of the smaller Higgs primes is 5336100, and divided by 12 this is 444675. But 17 is not a Higgs prime because the square of the product of the smaller primes is 901800900, which leaves a remainder of 4 when divided by 16.

From observation of the first few Higgs primes for squares through seventh powers, it would seem more compact to list those primes that are not Higgs primes:

Exponent 75th Higgs prime Not Higgs prime below 75th Higgs prime
2 797 17, 41, 73, 83, 89, 97, 103, 109, 113, 137, 163, 167, 179, 193, 227, 233, 239, 241, 251, 257, 271, 281, 293, 307, 313, 337, 353, 359, 379, 389, 401, 409, 433, 439, 443, 449, 457, 467, 479, 487, 499, 503, 521, 541, 563, 569, 577, 587, 593, 601, 613, 617, 619, 641, 647, 653, 673, 719, 739, 751, 757, 761, 769, 773
3 509 17, 97, 103, 113, 137, 163, 193, 227, 239, 241, 257, 307, 337, 353, 389, 401, 409, 433, 443, 449, 479, 487
4 409 97, 193, 257, 353, 389
5 389 193, 257
6 383 257
7 383 257

Observation further reveals that a Fermat prime $$2^{{2^{n}}}+1$$ can't be a Higgs prime for the ath power if a is less than 2n.

It's not known if there are infinitely many Higgs primes for any exponent a greater than 1. The situation is quite different for a = 1. There are only four of them: 2, 3, 7 and 43 (a sequence suspiciously similar to Sylvester's sequence). Burris & Lee (1993) found that about a fifth of the primes below a million are Higgs prime, and they concluded that even if the sequence of Higgs primes for squares is finite, "a computer enumeration is not feasible."
References

Burris, S.; Lee, S. (1993). "Tarski's high school identities". Amer. Math. Monthly. 100 (3): 231–236 [p. 233]. JSTOR 2324454.
Sloane, N.; Plouffe, S. (1995). The Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences. New York: Academic Press. ISBN 0-12-558630-2. M0660

vte

Prime number classes
By formula

Fermat (22n + 1) Mersenne (2p − 1) Double Mersenne (22p−1 − 1) Wagstaff (2p + 1)/3 Proth (k·2n + 1) Factorial (n! ± 1) Primorial (pn# ± 1) Euclid (pn# + 1) Pythagorean (4n + 1) Pierpont (2m·3n + 1) Quartan (x4 + y4) Solinas (2m ± 2n ± 1) Cullen (n·2n + 1) Woodall (n·2n − 1) Cuban (x3 − y3)/(x − y) Carol (2n − 1)2 − 2 Kynea (2n + 1)2 − 2 Leyland (xy + yx) Thabit (3·2n − 1) Williams ((b−1)·bn − 1) Mills (⌊A3n⌋)

By integer sequence

Fibonacci Lucas Pell Newman–Shanks–Williams Perrin Partitions Bell Motzkin

By property

Wieferich (pair) Wall–Sun–Sun Wolstenholme Wilson Lucky Fortunate Ramanujan Pillai Regular Strong Stern Supersingular (elliptic curve) Supersingular (moonshine theory) Good Super Higgs Highly cototient

Base-dependent

Happy Dihedral Palindromic Emirp Repunit (10n − 1)/9 Permutable Circular Truncatable Strobogrammatic Minimal Weakly Full reptend Unique Primeval Self Smarandache–Wellin Tetradic

Patterns

Twin (p, p + 2) Bi-twin chain (n − 1, n + 1, 2n − 1, 2n + 1, …) Triplet (p, p + 2 or p + 4, p + 6) Quadruplet (p, p + 2, p + 6, p + 8) k−Tuple Cousin (p, p + 4) Sexy (p, p + 6) Chen Sophie Germain/Safe (p, 2p + 1) Cunningham (p, 2p ± 1, 4p ± 3, 8p ± 7, ...) Arithmetic progression (p + a·n, n = 0, 1, 2, 3, ...) Balanced (consecutive p − n, p, p + n)

By size

Titanic (1,000+ digits) Gigantic (10,000+ digits) Mega (1,000,000+ digits) Largest known

Complex numbers

Eisenstein prime Gaussian prime

Composite numbers

Pseudoprime
Catalan Elliptic Euler Euler–Jacobi Fermat Frobenius Lucas Somer–Lucas Strong Carmichael number Almost prime Semiprime Interprime Pernicious

Related topics

Probable prime Industrial-grade prime Illegal prime Formula for primes Prime gap

First 60 primes

2 3 5 7 11 13 17 19 23 29 31 37 41 43 47 53 59 61 67 71 73 79 83 89 97 101 103 107 109 113 127 131 137 139 149 151 157 163 167 173 179 181 191 193 197 199 211 223 227 229 233 239 241 251 257 263 269 271 277 281

List of prime numbers