English

Frobenius Coin-Exchange Generating Functions

Number Theory 2021-12-21 v3

Abstract

We study variants of the \emph{Frobenius coin-exchange problem}: given nn positive relatively prime parameters, what is the largest integer that cannot be represented as a nonnegative integral linear combination of the given integers? This problem and its siblings can be understood through generating functions with 0/1 coefficients according to whether or not an integer is representable. In the 2-parameter case, this generating function has an elegant closed form, from which many corollaries follow, including a formula for the Frobenius problem. We establish a similar closed form for the generating function indicating all integers with exactly kk representations, with similar wide-ranging corollaries.

Cite

@article{arxiv.1901.00554,
  title  = {Frobenius Coin-Exchange Generating Functions},
  author = {Leonardo Bardomero and Matthias Beck},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1901.00554},
  year   = {2021}
}

Comments

6 pages, 1 figure, final version to appear in Amer. Math. Monthly

R2 v1 2026-06-23T07:01:50.878Z