A divisor $d\mid n$ is called unitary if its coprime with its cofactor, i.e. $\gcd(d,\frac{n}d)=1$. Since for each prime power $p^k\| n$, we either have $p^k\|d$ or $p\nmid n$, which lead to the following seemingly-efficient code to generate all unitary divisors:
def unitary_divisors1(n):
return sorted( prod(p^d for p,d in f) for f in Subsets(factor(n)) )
For comparison, the naive approach by filtering the divisors of $n$ would be:
def unitary_divisors2(n):
return [d for d in divisors(n) if gcd(d,n//d)==1]
While from theoretical perspective, unitary_divisors1(n)
is much more efficient than unitary_divisors2(n)
for "powerful" numbers $n$, unitary_divisors1(n)
loses badly to unitary_divisors2(n)
when $n$ is square-free (in which case every divisor of $n$ is unitary):
sage: N = prod(nth_prime(i) for i in (1..20))
sage: %time len(unitary_divisors1(N))
CPU times: user 26.8 s, sys: 64 ms, total: 26.9 s
Wall time: 26.9 s
1048576
sage: %time len(unitary_divisors2(N))
CPU times: user 672 ms, sys: 16 ms, total: 688 ms
Wall time: 688 ms
1048576
In this example with N
being the product of first 20 primes, unitary_divisors1(N)
is over 40 times slower than unitary_divisors2(N)
.
Is there a way to generate unitary divisors that works with efficiency close to divisors(n)
when $n$ is squarefree, and takes advantage of the known structure of unitary divisors (ie. works efficiently for powerful numbers $n$)?