English

Non-linear Recurrences that Quite Unexpectedly Generate Rational Numbers

Combinatorics 2009-09-03 v1

Abstract

Non-linear recurrences which generate integers in a surprising way have been studied by many people. Typically people study recurrences that are linear in the highest order term. In this paper I consider what happens when the recurrence is not linear in the highest order term. In this case we no longer produce a unique sequence, but we sometimes have surprising results. If the highest order term is raised to the mthm^{th} power we expect answers to have mthm^{th} roots, but for some specific recurrences it happens that we generate rational numbers ad infinitum. I will give a general example in the case of a first order recurrence with m=2m=2, and a more specific example that is order 3 with m=2m=2 which comes from a generalized Somos recurrence.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.0909.0469,
  title  = {Non-linear Recurrences that Quite Unexpectedly Generate Rational Numbers},
  author = {Emilie Hogan},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0909.0469},
  year   = {2009}
}

Comments

14 pages, accompanying Maple code can be found at http://math.rutgers.edu/~eahogan/maple/maple.html

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