On the least common multiple of random q-integers

For every positive integer n and for every $$\alpha \in [0, 1]$$ α ∈ [ 0 , 1 ] , let $${\mathcal {B}}(n, \alpha )$$ B ( n , α ) denote the probabilistic model in which a random set $${\mathcal {A}} \subseteq \{1, \ldots , n\}$$ A ⊆ { 1 , … , n } is constructed by picking independently each element of $$\{1, \ldots , n\}$$ { 1 , … , n } with probability $$\alpha $$ α . Cilleruelo, Rué, Šarka, and Zumalacárregui proved an almost sure asymptotic formula for the logarithm of the least common multiple of the elements of $${\mathcal {A}}$$ A .Let q be an indeterminate and let $$[k]_q := 1 + q + q^2 + \cdots + q^{k-1} \in {\mathbb {Z}}[q]$$ [ k ] q : = 1 + q + q 2 + ⋯ + q k - 1 ∈ Z [ q ] be the q-analog of the positive integer k. We determine the expected value and the variance of $$X := \deg {\text {lcm}}\!\big ([{\mathcal {A}}]_q\big )$$ X : = deg lcm ( [ A ] q ) , where $$[{\mathcal {A}}]_q := \big \{[k]_q : k \in {\mathcal {A}}\big \}$$ [ A ] q : = { [ k ] q : k ∈ A } . Then we prove an almost sure asymptotic formula for X, which is a q-analog of the result of Cilleruelo et al.