English

On the $j$-th smallest modulus of a covering system with distinct moduli

Number Theory 2023-08-25 v2 Combinatorics

Abstract

Covering systems were introduced by Erd\H{o}s in 1950. In the same article where he introduced them, he asked if the minimum modulus of a covering system with distinct moduli is bounded. In 2015, Hough answered affirmatively this long standing question. In 2022, Balister, Bollob\'as, Morris, Sahasrabudhe and Tiba gave a simpler and more versatile proof of Hough's result. Building upon their work, we show that there exists some absolute constant c>0c>0 such that the jj-th smallest modulus of a minimal covering system with distinct moduli is exp(cj2/log(j+1))\le \exp(cj^2/\log(j+1)).

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2212.01299,
  title  = {On the $j$-th smallest modulus of a covering system with distinct moduli},
  author = {Jonah Klein and Dimitris Koukoulopoulos and Simon Lemieux},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2212.01299},
  year   = {2023}
}

Comments

8 pages, minor corrections and changes. Final version, to appear in Int. J. Number Theory