Iteration Sums of The Euler Totient Function Regarding Powers of Fermat Primes

preprint2026arXivOpen access

Abstract

Euler totient function ϕ(n)ϕ(n) plays a central role in number theory and is applied in areas such as cryptography. In this paper, we study iterations of the totient function. We first prove that for any integer n>2n>2, iteratively applying ϕϕ eventually yields the value 22. Motivated by this terminal behavior, we examine sums of iterated totient values of the form ϕ(n)+ϕ(ϕ(n))+ϕ(ϕ(ϕ(n)))+⋯+ϕ(2)ϕ(n)+ϕ(ϕ(n))+ϕ(ϕ(ϕ(n)))+\cdots+ϕ(2), where the summation terminates at ϕ(2)ϕ(2). We show that for all integers of the form n=3kn = 3^k, this sum is equal to nn. We then extend this result to all powers of Fermat primes, deriving a closed-form expression for the corresponding summations.

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