Perfect powers that are sums of consecutive cubes

Michael Bennett, Vandita Patel, Samir Siksek

Published 2016-03-29Version 1

Euler noted the relation $6^3=3^3+4^3+5^3$ and asked for other instances of cubes that are sums of consecutive cubes. Similar problems have been studied by Cunningham, Catalan, Gennochi, Lucas, Pagliani, Cassels, Uchiyama, Stroeker and Zhongfeng Zhang. In particular Stroeker determined all squares that can be written as a sum of at most $50$ consecutive cubes. We generalize Stroeker's work by determining all perfect powers that are sums of at most $50$ consecutive cubes. Our methods include descent, linear forms in two logarithms, and Frey-Hellegouarch curves.