A note on <Emphasis Type="Italic">n</Emphasis>! modulo <Emphasis Type="Italic">p</Emphasis>

Let p be a prime, \(\varepsilon >0\) and \(0<L+1<L+N < p\). We prove that if \(p^{1/2+\varepsilon }< N <p^{1-\varepsilon }\), then

$$\begin{aligned} \#\{n!\,\,({\mathrm{mod}} \,p);\,\, L+1\le n\le L+N\} > c (N\log N)^{1/2},\,\, c=c(\varepsilon )>0. \end{aligned}$$

We use this bound to show that any \(\lambda \not \equiv 0\ ({\mathrm{mod}}\, p)\) can be represented in the form \(\lambda \equiv n_1!\cdots n_7!\ ({\mathrm{mod}}\, p)\), where \(n_i=o(p^{11/12})\). This refines the previously known range for \(n_i\).