English

A counterexample to Hildebrand's conjecture on stable sets

Combinatorics 2025-09-26 v2 Number Theory

Abstract

We provide a counterexample to a conjecture of Hildebrand which states that if §\S has positive lower density and is stable i.e. for all dd, nn is in S\mathcal{S} if and only if dndn is in S\mathcal{S} except on a set of density 00 then S(S+1)(S+2)\mathcal{S} \cap (\mathcal{S}+1) \cap (\mathcal{S}+2) has positive lower density and in particular is nonempty. We further show there exists a stable set of density 11q11 -\frac{1}{q-1} such that S(S+q1)=\mathcal{S} \cap \cdots \cap (\mathcal{S} + q -1) = \emptyset when qq is a prime, matching a bound proven by Hildebrand. Finally, we construct a function f:N{±1}f : \mathbb{N} \rightarrow \{\pm 1\} such that f(pn)=f(n)f(pn) = -f(n) for all but a 00 density set of nn depending on the prime pp but which fails the analogues of Sarnak and Chowla's conjectures.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2312.08544,
  title  = {A counterexample to Hildebrand's conjecture on stable sets},
  author = {Redmond McNamara},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2312.08544},
  year   = {2025}
}

Comments

14 pages

R2 v1 2026-06-28T13:50:20.217Z