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In mathematics, a Mersenne prime is a prime number that is one less than a power of two. That is, it is a prime number of the form M n = 2 n − 1 for some integer n. They are named after Marin Mersenne, a French Minim friar, who studied them in the early 17th century. If n is a composite number then so is 2 n − 1. Therefore, an equivalent ...
For example, the Lucas–Lehmer primality test can determine whether a Mersenne number (one less than a power of two) is prime, deterministically, in the same time as a single iteration of the Miller–Rabin test. [141] This is why since 1992 (as of December 2018) the largest known prime has always been a Mersenne prime. [142]
This is a list of articles about prime numbers. A prime number (or prime) is a natural number greater than 1 that has no positive divisors other than 1 and itself. By Euclid's theorem, there are an infinite number of prime numbers. Subsets of the prime numbers may be generated with various formulas for primes.
Mersenne primes and perfect numbers are two deeply interlinked types of natural numbers in number theory. Mersenne primes, named after the friar Marin Mersenne, are prime numbers that can be expressed as 2 p − 1 for some positive integer p. For example, 3 is a Mersenne prime as it is a prime number and is expressible as 2 2 − 1.
For example, the prime number 31 is a Mersenne prime because it is 1 less than 32 (2 5). Similarly, a prime number (like 257) that is one more than a positive power of two is called a Fermat prime—the exponent itself is a power of two. A fraction that has a power of two as its denominator is called a dyadic rational.
Prime number: A positive integer with exactly two positive divisors: itself and 1. The primes form an infinite sequence 2, 3, 5, 7, 11, 13, 17, 19, 23, 29, 31, ... Composite number: A positive integer that can be factored into a product of smaller positive integers. Every integer greater than one is either prime or composite.
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It states that an even number is perfect if and only if it has the form 2 p−1 (2 p − 1), where 2 p − 1 is a prime number. The theorem is named after mathematicians Euclid and Leonhard Euler, who respectively proved the "if" and "only if" aspects of the theorem. It has been conjectured that there are infinitely many Mersenne primes.