Factorising numbers with a Bose–Einstein condensate

Christoph Weiss, Steffen Page and Martin Holthaus

Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, 2004, vol. 341, issue C, 586-606

Abstract: The problem to express a natural number N as a product of natural numbers without regard to order corresponds to a thermally isolated non-interacting Bose gas in a one-dimensional potential with logarithmic energy eigenvalues. This correspondence is used for characterising the probability distribution which governs the number of factors in a randomly selected factorisation of an asymptotically large N. Asymptotic upper bounds on both the skewness and the excess of this distribution, and on the total number of factorisations, are conjectured. The asymptotic formulas are checked against exact numerical data obtained with the help of recursion relations. It is also demonstrated that for large numbers which are the product of different primes the probability distribution approaches a Gaussian, while identical prime factors give rise to non-Gaussian statistics.

Keywords: Number factorisation; Ideal Bose gas; Microcanonical ensemble; Asymptotic formulas; Bosonic correlations; Non-Gaussian statistics (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2004
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:phsmap:v:341:y:2004:i:c:p:586-606

DOI: 10.1016/j.physa.2004.05.047

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