## Even powers of Fibonacci numbers

In a previous post, it was pointed out that powers of Fibonacci numbers also obey recurrence relations.  For example, it is the case that,

$F_n^2-2F_{n+1}^2-2F_{n+2}^2+F_{n+3}^2 = 0$

In general, for even kth powers, it takes k+2 consecutive Fibonacci numbers to sum up to zero.  However, using Mathematica’s LatticeReduce function which has an integer relations algorithm, I found that if reduced to k+1 terms, then it can still sum up to a constant, though it is now non-zero.  Thus,

\begin{aligned} &F_n^2-3F_{n+1}^2+F_{n+2}^2 = (-1)^{n+1}\,2\\[1.5mm] &F_n^4-4F_{n+1}^4-19F_{n+2}^4-4F_{n+3}^4+F_{n+4}^4 = 6\\[1.5mm] &F_n^6-14F_{n+1}^6-90F_{n+2}^6+350F_{n+3}^6-90F_{n+4}^6-14F_{n+5}^6+F_{n+6}^6 = (-1)^n\, 80\\[1.5mm] &F_n^8-33F_{n+1}^8-747F_{n+2}^8+3894F_{n+3}^8+16270F_{n+4}^8+3894F_{n+5}^8-747F_{n+6}^8\\&\;\;-33F_{n+7}^8+F_{n+8}^8 = 2520\end{aligned}

and so on, with k = 10 summing to $(-1)^{n+1}\,226800$.  Notice the formulas are palindromic, the same read forwards or backwards.

I was curious if this sequence of constants,

$C(2p) = 2, 6, 80, 2520, 226800, \dots$

had a generating function. Unfortunately, OEIS didn’t recognize it, so that question is unanswered for now.

Update, May 26, 2012:  Jim Cullen found a recurrence relation which is equivalent to the formula,

\begin{aligned}C(2p)&=\prod_{n=1}^p \frac{2(2n-1)(F(n))^2}{n}=\frac{(2p)!}{p!^2}\prod_{n=1}^p (F(n))^2\\&=2,6,80, 2520, 226800,53222400,\dots\end{aligned}

hence the next constant is(12) = 53222400.  The product of the first p Fibonacci numbers (n) is called a fibonorial.