English

On a Diophantine equation of Erd\H{o}s and Graham

Number Theory 2021-02-11 v1

Abstract

We study solvability of the Diophantine equation \begin{equation*} \frac{n}{2^{n}}=\sum_{i=1}^{k}\frac{a_{i}}{2^{a_{i}}}, \end{equation*} in integers n,k,a1,,akn, k, a_{1},\ldots, a_{k} satisfying the conditions k2k\geq 2 and ai<ai+1a_{i}<a_{i+1} for i=1,,k1i=1,\ldots,k-1. The above Diophantine equation (of polynomial-exponential type) was mentioned in the monograph of Erd\H{o}s and Graham, where several questions were stated. Some of these questions were already answered by Borwein and Loring. We extend their work and investigate other aspects of Erd\H{o}s and Graham equation. First of all, we obtain the upper bound for the value aka_{k} given in terms of kk only. This mean, that with fixed kk our equation has only finitely many solutions in n,a1,,akn, a_{1},\ldots, a_{k}. Moreover, we construct an infinite set K\cal{K}, such that for each kKk\in\cal{K}, the considered equation has at least five solutions. As an application of our findings we enumerate all solutions of the equation for k8k\leq 8. Moreover, by applying greedy algorithm, we extend Borwein and Loring calculations and check that for each n104n\leq 10^4 there is a value of kk such that the considered equation has a solution in integers n+1=a1<a2<<akn+1=a_{1}<a_{2}<\ldots <a_{k}. Based on our numerical calculations we formulate some further questions and conjectures.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2008.01501,
  title  = {On a Diophantine equation of Erd\H{o}s and Graham},
  author = {Szabolcs Tengely and Maciej Ulas and Jakub Zygadło},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2008.01501},
  year   = {2021}
}

Comments

13 pages, to appear in the Journal of Number Theory