Denominators of Bernoulli polynomials

Abstract

For a positive integer $n$ let $\mathfrak{P}_n=\prod_{s_p(n)\ge p} p,$ where $p$ runs over all primes and $s_p(n)$ is the sum of the base $p$ digits of $n$. For all $n$ we prove that $\mathfrak{P}_n$ is divisible by all "small" primes with at most one exception. We also show that $\mathfrak{P}_n$ is large, has many prime factors exceeding $\sqrt{n}$, with the largest one exceeding $n^{20/37}$. We establish Kellner's conjecture, which says that the number of prime factors exceeding $\sqrt{n}$ grows asymptotically as $\kappa \sqrt{n}/\log n$ for some constant $\kappa$ with $\kappa=2$. Further, we compare the sizes of $\mathfrak{P}_n$ and $\mathfrak{P}_{n+1}$, leading to the somewhat surprising conclusion that although $\mathfrak{P}_n$ tends to infinity with $n$, the inequality $\mathfrak{P}_n>\mathfrak{P}_{n+1}$ is more frequent than its reverse.