English

The Determination of 2-color zero-sum generalized Schur Numbers

Combinatorics 2018-03-09 v2

Abstract

Consider the equation E:x1++xk1=xk\mathcal{E}: x_1+ \cdots+x_{k-1} =x_{k} and let kk and rr be positive integers such that rkr\mid k. The number Sz,2(k;r)S_{\mathfrak{z},2}(k;r) is defined to be the least positive integer tt such that for any 2-coloring χ:[1,t]{0,1}\chi: [1, t] \to \{0, 1\} there exists a solution (x^1,x^2,,x^k)(\hat{x}_1, \hat{x}_2, \ldots, \hat{x}_k) to the equation E\mathcal{E} satisfying i=1kχ(x^i)0(modr)\displaystyle \sum_{i=1}^k\chi(\hat{x}_i) \equiv 0\pmod{r}. In a recent paper, the first author posed the question of determining the exact value of Sz,2(k;4)S_{\mathfrak{z}, 2}(k;4). In this article, we solve this problem and show, more generally, that Sz,2(k,r)=kr2r+1S_{\mathfrak{z}, 2}(k, r)=kr - 2r+1 for all positive integers kk and rr with k>rk>r and rkr \mid k.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1803.00861,
  title  = {The Determination of 2-color zero-sum generalized Schur Numbers},
  author = {Aaron Robertson and Bidisha Roy and Subha Sarkar},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1803.00861},
  year   = {2018}
}