Periodicity of Balancing Numbers

The balancing numbers originally introduced by Behera and Panda [2] as solutions of a Diophantine equation on triangular numbers possess many interesting properties. Many of these properties are comparable to certain properties of Fibonacci numbers, while some others are more interesting. Wall [14] studied the periodicity of Fibonacci numbers modulo arbitrary natural numbers. The periodicity of balancing numbers modulo primes and modulo terms of certain sequences exhibits beautiful results, again, some of them are identical with corresponding results of Fibonacci numbers, while some others are more fascinating. An important observation concerning the periodicity of balancing numbers is that, the period of this sequence coincides with the modulus of congruence if the modulus is any power of 2. There are three known primes for which the period of the sequence of balancing numbers modulo each prime is equal to the period modulo its square, while for the Fibonacci sequence, till date no such prime is available.