A proof of Andrews-El Bachraoui's conjecture on the parity of coefficients of a $q$-series

Abstract

Recently, Andrews and El Bachraoui studied a partition function $s_1(n)$, which counts the number of two-color partitions into distinct parts of $n$ whose smallest part occurs in one prescribed color only, while every larger part may occur in either color or in both colors. They obtained a complete description modulo 4 for $s_1(n)$. They also considered a $q$-series $T_{o}(q)$ which is the odd companion series of the generating function for $s_1(n)$. At the end of their paper, they presented a conjecture on the parity of the coefficients of $T_o(q)$. In this paper, we confirm this conjecture. Moreover, we establish an infinite family of congruences modulo 8 for the coefficients of $S_1(q)$ and prove that the set of integers satisfying $s_1(n)\equiv 0\pmod 8$ has natural density one.