Aurifeuillian factorizations and the period of the Bell numbers modulo a prime

We show that the minimum period modulo of the Bell exponential integers is for all primes and several larger . Our proof of this result requires the prime factorization of these periods. For some primes the factoring is aided by an algebraic formula called an Aurifeuillian factorization. We explain how the coefficients of the factors in these formulas may be computed.