Overview
In mathematics, a perfect power is a natural number that is a product of equal natural factors, or, in other words, an integer that can be expressed as a square or a higher integer power of another integer greater than one. More formally, n is a perfect power if there exist natural numbers m > 1, and k > 1 such that mk = n. In this case, n may be called a perfect kth power. If k = 2 or k = 3, then n is called a perfect square or perfect cube, respectively. Sometimes 0 and 1 are also considered perfect powers (0k = 0 for any k > 0, 1k = 1 for any k).
Examples and sums
A sequence of perfect powers can be generated by iterating through the possible values for m and k. The first few ascending perfect powers in numerical order (showing duplicate powers) are :
The sum of the reciprocals of the perfect powers (including duplicates such as 34 and 92, both of which equal 81) is 1:
which can be proved as follows:
From Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0).