The Alternating Analogue of Melham’s Sums Shows Divisibility in Lucas Polynomial Sequences, Indicating New Relationships.
We introduce an alternating analogue of Melham’s sums for general (a,b)–type Lucas polynomial sequences. According to a previous result we restrict attention to the cases b=±1. Employing Ozeki–Prodinger-like identities, we establish that these alternating power (Melham) sums factor through explicit polynomials in the companion Lucas sequences, yielding sharp divisibility criteria. In particular, we prove that the sum(a2x2+4)W1(x)W3(x)⋯W2m+1(x)∑k=1n(−1)k W2k2m+1(x)is divisible by (w2n+1(x)−(−1)nax)2. Similar factorizations are obtained for the remaining three main theorems, and specialization to the classical Fibonacci, Lucas, Chebyshev and balancing polynomials is provided, extending earlier non-alternating results of Melham and others.
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Chan-Liang Chung (2026) studied this question.
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