Not so new congruences for Stirling numbers of the first kind, with an application to Chern classes

Abstract

In this paper we give simple expressions, involving binomials coefficients, for the value of $c(n,k)$ modulo $p^{v_p(n)}$, when $v_p(n) > 0$. Here $c(n,k)$ denotes a Stirling number of the first kind, and $v_p(n)$ is the highest power of $p$ dividing $n$. As an application, we compute the Chern classes of permutation representations of cyclic groups.