English

Counterexamples to a Conjecture of Dombi in Additive Number Theory

Number Theory 2023-01-02 v3 Discrete Mathematics Formal Languages and Automata Theory Combinatorics

Abstract

We disprove a 2002 conjecture of Dombi from additive number theory. More precisely, we find examples of sets ANA \subset \mathbb{N} with the property that NA\mathbb{N} \setminus A is infinite, but the sequence n{(a,b,c):n=a+b+c and a,b,cA}n \rightarrow |\{ (a,b,c) \, : \, n=a+b+c \text{ and } a,b,c \in A \}|, counting the number of 33-compositions using elements of AA only, is strictly increasing.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2212.12473,
  title  = {Counterexamples to a Conjecture of Dombi in Additive Number Theory},
  author = {Jason P. Bell and Jeffrey Shallit},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2212.12473},
  year   = {2023}
}

Comments

additional author added; largely rewritten with different example