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Let$u$_{$n$}be the$n$th term of a Lucas sequence or a Lehmer sequence. In this article we shall establish an estimate from below for the greatest prime factor of$u$_{$n$}which is of the form$n$exp(log$n$/104 log log$n$). In doing so, we are able to resolve a question of Schinzel from 1962 and a conjecture of Erdős from 1965. In addition we are able to give the first general improvement on results of Bang from 1886 and Carmichael from 1912.

We prove a sharp Bernstein inequality for general-state-space and not necessarily reversible Markov chains. It is sharp in the sense that the variance proxy term is optimal. Our result covers the classical Bernstein's inequality for independent random variables as a special case.