The Jacobsthal numbers are the numbers obtained by the s in the Lucas sequence
with
and
,
corresponding to
and
.
They and the Jacobsthal-Lucas numbers (the
s) satisfy the recurrence
relation
|
(1)
|
for ,
with the analogous recurrence for
. The Jacobsthal numbers satisfy
and
and are 0, 1, 1, 3, 5, 11, 21, 43, 85, 171, 341, ... (OEIS
A001045). The Jacobsthal-Lucas numbers satisfy
and
and are 2, 1, 5, 7, 17, 31, 65, 127, 257, 511, 1025, ... (OEIS A014551).
The properties of these numbers are summarized in Horadam (1996).
Microcontrollers (and other computers) use conditional instructions to change the flow of execution of a program. In addition to branch instructions, some microcontrollers use skip instructions which conditionally bypass the next instruction. This winds up being useful for one case out of the four possibilities on 2 bits, 3 cases on 3 bits, 5 cases on 4 bits, 11 on 5 bits, 21 on 6 bits, 43 on 7 bits, 85 on 8 bits, ..., which are exactly the Jacobsthal numbers (Hirst 2006).
The Jacobsthal and Jacobsthal-Lucas numbers are given, for , by the closed form expressions
|
(2)
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(3)
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where
is the floor function and
is a binomial coefficient.
The Binet forms are
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(4)
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(5)
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(6)
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(7)
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Amazingly, when interpreted in binary, the Jacobsthal numbers give the
th iteration of applying the rule 28 cellular automaton to initial conditions consisting
of a single black cell (E. W. Weisstein, pers. comm., Apr. 12, 2006).
The generating functions are
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(8)
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(9)
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The Simson formulas, valid for , are
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(10)
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(11)
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Summation formulas, valid for , include
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(12)
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(13)
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Interrelationships are given below, with indices restricted so that all subscripts are nonnegative. In particular, in the identity involving
,
in those involving
, and
in those involving
.
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(14)
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(15)
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(16)
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(17)
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(18)
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(19)
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(20)
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(21)
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(22)
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(23)
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(24)
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(25)
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(26)
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(27)
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(28)
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(29)
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(30)
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(31)
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(32)
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(33)
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(Horadam 1996).