On Pseudosquares and Pseudopowers

Abstract

Introduced by Kraitchik and Lehmer, an $x$-pseudosquare is a positive integer $n\equiv1\pmod 8$ that is a quadratic residue for each odd prime $p\le x$, yet is not a square. We use bounds of character sums to prove that pseudosquares are equidistributed in fairly short intervals. An $x$-pseudopower to base $g$ is a positive integer which is not a power of $g$ yet is so modulo $p$ for all primes $p\le x$. It is conjectured by Bach, Lukes, Shallit, and Williams that the least such number is at most $\exp(a_g x/\log x)$ for a suitable constant $a_g$. A bound of $\exp(a_g x\log\log x/\log x)$ is proved conditionally on the Riemann Hypothesis for Dedekind zeta functions, thus improving on a recent conditional exponential bound of Konyagin and the present authors. We also give a GRH-conditional equidistribution result for pseudopowers that is analogous to our unconditional result for pseudosquares.