Calculating sum of geometric series (mod m)

Viewed 10436

I have a series

S = i^(m) + i^(2m) + ...............  + i^(km)  (mod m)   

0 <= i < m, k may be very large (up to 100,000,000),  m <= 300000

I want to find the sum. I cannot apply the Geometric Progression (GP) formula because then result will have denominator and then I will have to find modular inverse which may not exist (if the denominator and m are not coprime).

So I made an alternate algorithm making an assumption that these powers will make a cycle of length much smaller than k (because it is a modular equation and so I would obtain something like 2,7,9,1,2,7,9,1....) and that cycle will repeat in the above series. So instead of iterating from 0 to k, I would just find the sum of numbers in a cycle and then calculate the number of cycles in the above series and multiply them. So I first found i^m (mod m) and then multiplied this number again and again taking modulo at each step until I reached the first element again.

But when I actually coded the algorithm, for some values of i, I got cycles which were of very large size. And hence took a large amount of time before terminating and hence my assumption is incorrect.

So is there any other pattern we can find out? (Basically I don't want to iterate over k.) So please give me an idea of an efficient algorithm to find the sum.

4 Answers
Related