English

The Parametric Frobenius Problem

Combinatorics 2015-05-25 v2 Number Theory

Abstract

Given relatively prime positive integers a_1,...,a_n, the Frobenius number is the largest integer that cannot be written as a nonnegative integer combination of the a_i. We examine the parametric version of this problem: given a_i=a_i(t) as functions of t, compute the Frobenius number as a function of t. A function f is a quasi-polynomial if there exists a period m and polynomials f_0,...,f_{m-1} such that f(t)=f_{t mod m}(t) for all positive integers t. We conjecture that, if the a_i(t) are polynomials (or quasi-polynomials) in t, then the Frobenius number agrees with a quasi-polynomial, for sufficiently large t. We prove this in the case where the a_i(t) are linear functions, and also prove it in the case where n (the number of generators) is at most 3.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1502.06009,
  title  = {The Parametric Frobenius Problem},
  author = {Bjarke Hammersholt Roune and Kevin Woods},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1502.06009},
  year   = {2015}
}

Comments

16 pages. Minor typographical revisions, accepted to EJC

R2 v1 2026-06-22T08:34:21.075Z