Need some understanding on RSA public key exponent I am new in cryptography domain and try to build some understanding on RSA key pair generation.

My doubt is on RSA public key exponent value . Can exponent be any value (prime or non prime numbers)? i am not getting proper answer for this.

if someone has useful link for this please help to share.

Regards
Nikhil
The exponent and the totient of the modulus should be coprime. (i.e. $\gcd(\varphi(p\cdot q),e)=1$) The easiest way to reduce the chances of them sharing factors is to make the exponent prime. There is a tiny chance that the totient of the modulus will have the exponent as a factor, making them not coprime, but it's a simple check for $\varphi(p\cdot q)\equiv 0\pmod e$ (should be false). I'm not fully keen on the details as to why exactly, but I believe it's due to biases that are present if the exponent and the totient share factors.

Though this is easy to get around, as the exponent doesn't need to be unique to each key. It's common practice to simply use a fixed value of 65537 and perform the check mentioned above.