English

On the discriminator of Lucas sequences. II

Number Theory 2023-09-25 v1

Abstract

The family of Shallit sequences consists of the Lucas sequences satisfying the recurrence Un+2(k)=(4k+2)Un+1(k)Un(k),U_{n+2}(k)=(4k+2)U_{n+1}(k) -U_n(k), with initial values U0(k)=0U_0(k)=0 and U1(k)=1U_1(k)=1 and with k1k\ge 1 arbitrary. For every fixed kk the integers {Un(k)}n0\{U_n(k)\}_{n\ge 0} are distinct, and hence for every n1n\ge 1 there exists a smallest integer Dk(n)D_k(n), called discriminator, such that U0(k),U1(k),,Un1(k)U_0(k),U_1(k),\ldots,U_{n-1}(k) are pairwise incongruent modulo Dk(n).D_k(n). In part I it was proved that there exists a constant nkn_k such that Dk(n)D_{k}(n) has a simple characterization for every nnkn\ge n_k. Here, we study the values not following this characterization and provide an upper bound for nkn_k using Matveev's theorem and the Koksma-Erdos-Tur\'an inequality. We completely determine the discriminator Dk(n)D_{k}(n) for every n1n\ge 1 and a set of integers kk of natural density 68/7568/75. We also correct an omission in the statement of Theorem 3 in part I.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2309.12843,
  title  = {On the discriminator of Lucas sequences. II},
  author = {Matteo Ferrari and Florian Luca and Pieter Moree},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2309.12843},
  year   = {2023}
}

Comments

25 pages, 7 tables