Ramanujan-type Congruences for Overpartitions Modulo 5

William Y. C. Chen, Lisa H. Sun, Rong-Hua Wang, Li Zhang

Published 2014-06-15Version 1

Let $\overline{p}(n)$ denote the number of overpartitions of $n$. Hirschhorn and Sellers showed that $\overline{p}(4n+3)\equiv 0 \pmod{8}$ for $n\geq 0$. They also conjectured that $\overline{p}(40n+35)\equiv 0 \pmod{40}$ for $n\geq 0$. Chen and Xia proved this conjecture by using the $(p,k)$-parametrization of theta functions given by Alaca, Alaca and Williams. In this paper, we show that $\overline{p}(5n)\equiv (-1)^{n}\overline{p}(4\cdot 5n) \pmod{5}$ for $n \geq 0$ and $\overline{p}(n)\equiv (-1)^{n}\overline{p}(4n)\pmod{8}$ for $n \geq 0$ by using the relation of the generating function of $\overline{p}(5n)$ modulo $5$ found by Treneer and the $2$-adic expansion of the generating function of $\overline{p}(n)$ due to Mahlburg. As a consequence, we deduce that $\overline{p}(4^k(40n+35))\equiv 0 \pmod{40}$ for $n,k\geq 0$. Furthermore, applying the Hecke operator on $\phi(q)^3$ and the fact that $\phi(q)^3$ is a Hecke eigenform, we obtain an infinite family of congrences $\overline{p}(4^k \cdot5\ell^2n)\equiv 0 \pmod{5}$, where $k\ge 0$ and $\ell$ is a prime such that $\ell\equiv3 \pmod{5}$ and $\left(\frac{-n}{\ell}\right)=-1$. Moreover, we show that $\overline{p}(5^{2}n)\equiv \overline{p}(5^{4}n) \pmod{5}$ for $n \ge 0$. So we are led to the congruences $\overline{p}\big(4^k5^{2i+3}(5n\pm1)\big)\equiv 0 \pmod{5}$ for $n, k, i\ge 0$. In this way, we obtain various Ramanujan-type congruences for $\overline{p}(n)$ modulo $5$ such as $\overline{p}(45(3n+1))\equiv 0 \pmod{5}$ and $\overline{p}(125(5n\pm 1))\equiv 0 \pmod{5}$ for $n\geq 0$.