A series of new congruences for Bernoulli numbers and Eisenstein series

Abstract

We prove congruences of shape E_{k+h}\equiv E_{k}\cdot E_{h}(mod N) modulo powers N of small prime numbers p, thereby refining the well-known Kummer-type congruences modulo these p of the normalized Eisenstein series E_{k}. The method uses Serres theory of Iwasawa functions and p-adic Eisenstein series; it presents a rather general procedure to find and verify such congruences with a modest amount of numerical calculation.