Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 December 1997
In this paper we study the value distribution of the least primitive root to a prime modulus, as the modulus varies. For each odd prime number p, we shall denote by g(p) and G(p) the least primitive root and the least prime primitive root (mod p), respectively. Numerical examples show that, in most cases, g(p) and G(p) are very small (cf. §4). We can support this observation by a probabilistic argument [14, §1]. In fact, on the assumption of a good distribution of the primitive residue classes modulo p, we can surmise that
formula here
where π(x) denotes the number of primes not exceeding x.