There Are Infinitely Many Mersnne Composite Numbers with Prime Exponents

Abstract

By extending both arithmetical operations into finite sets of natural numbers, from the entire set of natural numbers successively deleting some residue classes modulo a prime, we invented a recursive sieve method or algorithm on natural numbers and their sets. The algorithm mechanically yields a sequence of sets, which converges to the set of all primes p such that 2 p + 1 divides the Mersenne number M p . The cardinal sequence corresponding to the sequence of sets is strictly increasing. So that we have captured enough usable structures, without any estimation, the existing theories of those structures allow us to prove an exact result: there are infinitely many Mersenne composite numbers with prime exponents M p .