English

The Golden Sieve

Number Theory 2026-03-09 v2

Abstract

We revisit the golden sieve, a self-referential deletion process on increasing sequences of positive integers introduced by the author in 2002. Applied to the natural numbers, the sieve produces the Wythoff pair as a Beatty partition. For arithmetic progressions aN+ba\mathbb{N}+b, we establish a connection with the (j,x,y,z)(j,x,y,z)-hiccup sequences recently studied by Fokkink and Joshi and with Fraenkel's complementary partitions. We further introduce an extraction sieve that also produces hiccup sequences, and whose action on arithmetic progressions is governed by an explicit affine transformation of hiccup parameters.

Cite

@article{arxiv.2602.17735,
  title  = {The Golden Sieve},
  author = {Benoit Cloitre},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2602.17735},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

26 pages, 2 tables. Added proof chain for the Wythoff identification made clear. Remark on Beatty dichotomy promoted to Corollary with explicit algebraic obstruction. Several redundant remarks removed. Open questions reduced to three

R2 v1 2026-07-01T10:43:29.117Z