On the tower factorization of integers

Abstract

Under the fundamental theorem of arithmetic, any integer $n>1$ can be uniquely written as a product of prime powers $p^a$; factoring each exponent $a$ as a product of prime powers $q^b$, and so on, one will obtain what is called the tower factorization of $n$. Here, given an integer $n>1$, we study its height $h(n)$, that is, the number of "floors" in its tower factorization. In particular, given a fixed integer $k\ge 1$, we provide a formula for the density of the set of integers $n$ with $h(n)=k$. This allows us to estimate the number of floors that a positive integer will have on average. We also show that there exist arbitrarily long sequences of consecutive integers with arbitrarily large heights.

arXiv comment8 pages. Accepted for publication in the Amer. Math. Monthly