A Greatest Common Divisor Criterion of Certain Binomial Coefficients

Dakai Guo, Ruichen Qiu, Yichuan Cao, Ruyong Feng, Xiao-Shan Gao


The binomial greatest common divisor (gcd) criterion recorded as OEIS A080170 is proven. The criterion also appears as conjecture (17) in Ralf Stephan’s list of OEIS conjectures. For $k\geq 2$, put $D(k)=\gcd_{2\leq q\leq k+1}\binom{qk}{k},\,n=k+1.$ If $P$ is the largest prime-power component $p^a$ exactly dividing $n$, then the criterion asserts $D(k)=1\,\Longleftrightarrow\,\frac{n}{P}>P.$ The proof is formalized in Lean and the Lean artifact is accepted as part of the Formal Conjectures project. Both the natural-language proof and the Lean formalization are generated by the MechMath Agent Team, an AI agent developed by the authors.