Factorials and powers, a minimality result

Abstract

Let $a > 1$. Then $a^n < n!$ for some positive integer $n$. We show that the smallest such $n$ is one of a pair of possibilities, or is one possibility, which we show how to calculate. There are three interesting numerical sequences which play a central role in our arguments. This paper is based on the improvement on Sterling's approximation of factorials due to Robbins \cite{Robbins} and results of \cite{Radford}