# A spiralling sequence based on integer divisors. Has anyone noticed this before?

Firstly, please excuse the informal style of my explanation, as I am not a mathematician, although I am aware that this can be explained in more formal terms.

I have mapped integers to points on a circle on the complex plane in the following way: $$a_n=\prod _{j=1}^n (-1)^{2 (n \bmod j)/j}$$ I then took a sequence of partial sums of $a_n$: $$b_n=\sum _{j=1}^n a_j$$ I think of it as a path made of vectors of length 1 on the complex plane. I then plotted $b_n$, and I saw this beautiful vine-like shape:

(for $n <= 45000$)

(for $n <= 1000$)

The path goes clockwise, then the spin accelerates until it turns anticlockwise and moves somewhere else. In order to find out more about the "whirlpools" and "peak flows", I checked the differences between consecutive terms of $a_n$, and obtained the following plot:

The minima/"peak flows" fall at $n = 1, 4, 11, 30, 83, 226, ...$, which appears to correspond to http://oeis.org/A078141, and to be given by $$\left\lfloor e^{n-\gamma }\right\rfloor$$ I have checked that the "whirlpools" appear to correspond to $$\left\lfloor e^{n - \gamma + 1/2}\right\rfloor$$ I think this would mean that each branch of the vine is $e$ times larger than the previous one in some way...

As for the position of the "peak flows" on the complex plane, they are: $$1.,0.5\, +0.866025 i,0.695702\, +1.84669 i,1.28152\, +1.03625 i,1.75407\, +1.91755 i$$

for $n = 1, 4, 11, 30, 83$.

Here is a plot of the absolute values of $b_n$:

Here is an array plot of distances between terms of $a_n$, for $n <= 100$, just for fun, really:

I have a bunch of questions:

• As per title. Is this something that has been noticed before?
• Why do the "whirlpools" fall where they do on the complex plane? What is special about those values?
• Is every term of $a_n$ unique? If so, is it possible that there exists a way of learning something about the divisors of $n$ from $a_n$ or $b_n$?
• Are you using the principal root whenever you compute $(-1)^{2(n\pmod{j})/j}$? – Ben Sheller Mar 22 '16 at 15:44
• You may want to check out: math.harvard.edu/~elkies/M259.98/whorls.html – Ben Sheller Mar 22 '16 at 15:59
• And the reference from that page: "Ten Lectures on the Interface Between Analytic Number Theory and Harmonic Analysis," by Montgomery. – Ben Sheller Mar 22 '16 at 15:59
• Here is a Wolfram Alpha plot that looks like the third plot, based on @Ben's comments and the approximation $\sum_{k=1}^n \frac{1}{k} \approx \log n + 0.5772$. – Marc Paul Mar 22 '16 at 19:41
• Here are some similar things, with a small amount of explanation. – David Mar 22 '16 at 21:25

For the second question: "Why do the whirlpools occur where they do?" Let us first simplify the problem a little: to avoid confusion regarding which root to use in the definition of $a_n$, take $a_n=\prod_{j=1}^n e^{2\pi i(n\pmod{j})/j}$ Now, observe that: $a_{n+1}=a_n\cdot e^{\frac{2\pi i n}{n+1}}\cdot\prod_{j=1}^{n+1}e^{2\pi i/j}=a_n\cdot e^{\frac{-2\pi i }{n+1}}\cdot\prod_{j=1}^{n+1}e^{2\pi i/j}$ (if you would like me to write out a proof of this 'observation,' leave a comment, and I'll add one). Then, by induction and the fact that $a_1=1$, we obtain the explicit formula: $a_n=\prod_{m=0}^{n-2}\prod_{j=1}^{m+1}e^{\frac{2\pi i}{j}}$, which we can simplify down to: $$a_n=\exp(2\pi i nH_n)$$ where $H_n=\sum_{j=1}^n\frac{1}{j}$. Then we may compute $a_{n+1}-a_n=\exp(2\pi i(n+1)(\frac{1}{n+1}+H_n)-\exp(2\pi inH_n)$ $=\exp(2\pi inH_n)\exp(2\pi iH_n)-\exp(2\pi inH_n)=a_n(\exp(2\pi i H_n)-1)$
Note that a whirlpool will correspond to the smallest possible change $|a_{n+1}-a_n|$: we are looking for places where adding consecutive terms does not change things by very much. So, using the approximation $H_n\approx \log n+\gamma$ helpfully pointed out by Marc Paul in the comments above, we get that the local minimums of $|a_{n+1}-a_n|$ should occur near $\exp(2\pi i (\log(x)+\gamma))=1$ i.e. when $\log(x)+\gamma=n$ for some integer $n$, and this occurs exactly when $x=e^{n-\gamma}$. This is because then $|a_{n+1}-a_n|\approx 0$ will be as close to $0$ as possible. Similarly, the "maximum flows" should be near where $\exp(2\pi i(\log(x)+\gamma))=-1$, i.e. near $x=e^{n-\gamma+.5}$, because this is where $|a_{n+1}-a_n|\approx 2$, which is the maximum possible value.
Warning: there is a little unfinished business ahead in the answer to your third question, "Is every term of $a_n$ unique?" In short, no. $a_1=1=a_2$. However, in general if $a_n=a_m$ with $n>m$, then using our formula for $a_n$, we have $\exp(2\pi inH_n)=\exp(2\pi imH_m)$ which implies $2\pi inH_n-2\pi imH_m=2\pi i k$ for some integer $k$. Then we have: $$\sum\limits_{j=1}^m\frac{n-m}{j}+\sum\limits_{j=m+1}^n\frac{n}{j}=k$$ which I suspect has no solutions other than $n=2$, $m=1$, $k=2$, but which remains to be proved.
• Oh, and the formula for $a_n$ can also be seen directly by considering the possible residues of $n\pmod{j}$ for $j=1,...,n$ without doing the recursive thing I did. – Ben Sheller Mar 23 '16 at 1:44
• It looks like there are some higher-dimensional analogues, but I don't know much about them...you could maybe try Googling "higher-dimensional exponential sums," or you could add some $z$-coordinate into your formula above; maybe by $a_n=(exp(2\pi inH_n), nH_n)$ or something. I'm not sure exactly what you'll get. – Ben Sheller Mar 23 '16 at 16:46