Arithmetic theory of harmonic numbers

Abstract:

Harmonic numbers $H_{k}=\sum _{0<j\leqslant k}1/j\ (k=0,1,2,\ldots )$ play important roles in mathematics. In this paper we investigate their arithmetic properties and obtain various basic congruences. Let $p>3$ be a prime. We show that \begin{equation*} \sum _{k=1}^{p-1}\frac {H_{k}}{k2^{k}}\equiv 0\ (\mathrm {mod} \ p),\ \sum _{k=1}^{p-1}H_{k}^{2} \equiv 2p-2\ (\mathrm {mod} \ p^{2}), \ \sum _{k=1}^{p-1}H_{k}^{3}\equiv 6\ (\mathrm {mod} \ p),\end{equation*} and \begin{equation*} \sum _{k=1}^{p-1}\frac {H_{k}^{2}}{k^{2}}\equiv 0\ (\mathrm {mod} \ p)\qquad \text {provided }\ p>5. \end{equation*} (In contrast, it is known that $\sum _{k=1}^{\infty }H_{k}/(k2^{k})=\pi ^{2}/12$ and $\sum _{k=1}^{\infty }H_{k}^{2}/k^{2}=17\pi ^{4}/360$.) Our tools include some sophisticated combinatorial identities and properties of Bernoulli numbers.