On two congruence conjectures of Z.-W. Sun involving Franel numbers

Guo-Shuai Mao, Yan Liu

Published 2021-11-16, updated 2021-12-03Version 3

In this paper, we mainly prove the following conjectures of Z.-W. Sun \cite{S13}: Let $p>2$ be a prime. If $p=x^2+3y^2$ with $x,y\in\mathbb{Z}$ and $x\equiv1\pmod 3$, then $$x\equiv\frac14\sum_{k=0}^{p-1}(3k+4)\frac{f_k} {2^k}\equiv\frac12\sum_{k=0}^{p-1}(3k+2)\frac{f_k}{(-4)^k}\pmod{p^2},$$ and if $p\equiv1\pmod3$, then $$\sum_{k=0}^{p-1}\frac{f_k}{2^k}\equiv\sum_{k=0}^{p-1}\frac{f_k}{(-4)^k}\pmod{p^3},$$ where $f_n=\sum_{k=0}^n\binom{n}k^3$ stands for the $n$th Franel number.