English

Effectiveness of Hindman's theorem for bounded sums

Logic 2016-03-29 v1

Abstract

We consider the strength and effective content of restricted versions of Hindman's Theorem in which the number of colors is specified and the length of the sums has a specified finite bound. Let HTkn\mathsf{HT}^{\leq n}_k denote the assertion that for each kk-coloring cc of N\mathbb{N} there is an infinite set XNX \subseteq \mathbb{N} such that all sums xFx\sum_{x \in F} x for FXF \subseteq X and 0<Fn0 < |F| \leq n have the same color. We prove that there is a computable 22-coloring cc of N\mathbb{N} such that there is no infinite computable set XX such that all nonempty sums of at most 22 elements of XX have the same color. It follows that HT22\mathsf{HT}^{\leq 2}_2 is not provable in RCA0\mathsf{RCA}_0 and in fact we show that it implies SRT22\mathsf{SRT}^2_2 in RCA0\mathsf{RCA}_0. We also show that there is a computable instance of HT33\mathsf{HT}^{\leq 3}_3 with all solutions computing 00'. The proof of this result shows that HT33\mathsf{HT}^{\leq 3}_3 implies ACA0\mathsf{ACA}_0 in RCA0\mathsf{RCA}_0.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1603.08249,
  title  = {Effectiveness of Hindman's theorem for bounded sums},
  author = {Damir D. Dzhafarov and Carl G. Jockusch, and Reed Solomon and Linda Brown Westrick},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1603.08249},
  year   = {2016}
}
R2 v1 2026-06-22T13:19:24.368Z