English

Generalized Beatty sequences and complementary triples

Number Theory 2019-10-16 v3

Abstract

A generalized Beatty sequence is a sequence VV defined by V(n)=pnα+qn+rV(n)=p\lfloor{n\alpha}\rfloor+qn +r, for n=1,2,n=1,2,\dots, where α\alpha is a real number, and p,q,rp,q,r are integers. These occur in several problems, as for instance in homomorphic embeddings of Sturmian languages in the integers. Our results are for the case that α\alpha is the golden mean, but we show how some results generalise to arbitrary quadratic irrationals. We mainly consider the following question: For which sixtuples of integers p,q,r,s,t,up,q,r,s,t,u are the two sequences V=(pnα+qn+r)V=(p\lfloor{n\alpha}\rfloor+qn +r) and W=(snα+tn+u)W=(s\lfloor{n\alpha}\rfloor+tn +u) complementary sequences? We also study complementary triples, i.e., three sequences Vi=(pinα+qin+ri),i=1,2,3V_i=(p_i\lfloor{n\alpha}\rfloor+q_in+r_i), \:i=1,2,3, with the property that the sets they determine are disjoint with union the positive integers.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1809.03424,
  title  = {Generalized Beatty sequences and complementary triples},
  author = {J. -P. Allouche and F. M. Dekking},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1809.03424},
  year   = {2019}
}