English

End behavior of Ramanujan's taxicab numbers

Number Theory 2024-04-15 v1 Combinatorics

Abstract

Generalized taxicab numbers are the smallest positive integers that are the sum of exactly jj, positive kk-th powers in exactly mm distinct ways. This paper is considers for which values of mm does a smallest such integer exist as jj gets large. There appear to be only two possible outcomes, leading to curious results like there is no positive integer that can be expressed as the sum of exactly 1010 positive squares in exactly 33 ways. This paper resolves a number of conjectures found in the OEIS by considering generalized Taxicab numbers in the setting of the theory of partitions.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2404.08190,
  title  = {End behavior of Ramanujan's taxicab numbers},
  author = {Brennan Benfield and Oliver Lippard and Arindam Roy},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2404.08190},
  year   = {2024}
}