Fermat Pseudoprime
The motivation for the definition of a pseudoprime comes from Fermat's little theorem. Specifically, we consider the statement of the converse of Fermat's little theorem, which we have no justification in claiming is a true statement:
Given a prime
and number where , if , then is prime.
This statement is not true. Consider the following counterexample:
when
Numbers which satisfy this property are called Fermat pseudoprimes, because with respect to Fermat's little theorem, they act like prime numbers, but are not.
If
for some
Hence, in the language of this definition,
Numbers which are pseudoprime to all coprime bases are called Carmichael numbers.