Newman's identities, lucas sequences and congruences for certain partition functions

Let r be an integer with 2 ≤ r ≤ 24 and let pr(n) be defined by $\sum _{n=0}^\infty p_r(n) q^n = \prod _{k=1}^\infty (1-q^k)^r$. In this paper, we provide uniform methods for discovering infinite families of congruences and strange congruences for pr(n) by using some identities on pr(n) due to Newman. As applications, we establish many infinite families of congruences and strange congruences for certain partition functions, such as Andrews's smallest parts function, the coefficients of Ramanujan's ϕ function and p-regular partition functions. For example, we prove that for n ≥ 0, \[ \textrm{spt}\bigg( \frac{1991n(3n+1) }{2} +83\bigg) \equiv \textrm{spt}\bigg(\frac{1991n(3n+5)}{2} +2074\bigg) \equiv 0\ (\textrm{mod} \ 11), \] and for k ≥ 0, \[ \textrm{spt}\bigg( \frac{143\times 5^{6k} +1 }{24}\bigg)\equiv 2^{k+2} \ (\textrm{mod}\ 11), \] where spt(n) denotes Andrews's smallest parts function.