相关论文: Small sums of five roots of unity
We prove new upper bounds on the number of representations of rational numbers $\frac{m}{n}$ as a sum of $4$ unit fractions, giving five different regions, depending on the size of $m$ in terms of $n$. In particular, we improve the most…
A vanishing sum of roots of unity is called minimal if no proper, nonempty sub-sum of it vanishes. This paper classifies all minimal vanishing sums of roots of unity of weight at most 16 by hand, thereby uncovering new phenomena beyond the…
Fix an integer n>=1. Suppose that a simple polygon is the union of n triangles whose vertices along the common boundary are arranged cyclically. How many sides can such a union -- to be called regular -- have at most? This gives OEIS…
Consider the $m$-th roots of unity in {\bf C}, where $m>0$ is an integer. We address the following question: For what values of $n$ can one find $n$ such $m$-th roots of unity (with repetitions allowed) adding up to zero? We prove that the…
We prove new upper bounds for the number of representations of an arbitrary rational number as a sum of three unit fractions. In particular, for fixed $m$ there are at most $\mathcal{O}_{\epsilon}(n^{3/5+\epsilon})$ solutions of…
Given a non-negative $n \times n$ matrix viewed as a set of distances between $n$ points, we consider the property testing problem of deciding if it is a metric. We also consider the same problem for two special classes of metrics, tree…
We show that a tree of order $n$ has at most $O(5^{n/4})$ nonisomorphic subtrees, and that this bound is best possible. We also prove an analogous result for the number of nonisomorphic rooted subtrees of a rooted tree.
Let $k$ and $n$ be positive integers, $n>k$. Define $r(n,k)$ to be the minimum positive value of $$ |\sqrt{a_1} + ... + \sqrt{a_k} - \sqrt{b_1} - >... -\sqrt{b_k} | $$ where $ a_1, a_2, ..., a_k, b_1, b_2, ..., b_k $ are positive integers…
Writing for a general mathematical audience, we provide elementary upper and lower bounds on the growth (as a function of N) of the sum \sum_{n=1}^N (-1)^{\floor{n x}} for various fixed x. For example, if x is a quadratic irrational, then…
The sum of square roots is as follows: Given $x_1,\dots,x_n \in \mathbb{Z}$ and $a_1,\dots,a_n \in \mathbb{N}$ decide whether $ E=\sum_{i=1}^n x_i \sqrt{a_i} \geq 0$. It is a prominent open problem (Problem 33 of the Open Problems Project),…
The orthorecursive expansion of unity with respect to the system $\{x, x^2, x^3, \ldots\}$ in $L^2([0,1])$ produces a sequence of rational coefficients $(c_n)$ defined by an explicit recurrence. Kalmynin and Kosenko established the bounds…
Consider the projections of a finite set $A\subset R^n$ onto the coordinate hyperplanes. How small can the sum of the sizes of these projections be, given the size of $A$? In a different form, this problem has been studied earlier in the…
For a fixed integer $n$, we study the question whether at least one of the numbers $\Re X\omega^k$, $1\leq k\leq n$, is $\varepsilon$-close to an integer, for any possible value of $X\in\mathbb{C}$, where $\omega$ is a primitive $n$th root…
It is proved that the projection constants of two- and three-dimensional spaces are bounded by $4/3$ and $(1+\sqrt 5)/2$, respectively. These bounds are attained precisely by the spaces whose unit balls are the regular hexagon and…
Define $||n||$ to be the \emph{complexity} of $n$, which is the smallest number of $1$s needed to write $n$ using an arbitrary combination of addition and multiplication. John Selfridge showed that $||n|| \geq 3\log_3 n$ for all $n$.…
New bounds on the number of similar or directly similar copies of a pattern within a finite subset of the line or the plane are proved. The number of equilateral triangles whose vertices all lie within an $n$-point subset of the plane is…
In 1946 Erd\H os asked for the maximum number of unit distances, $u(n)$, among $n$ points in the plane. He showed that $u(n)> n^{1+c/\log\log n}$ and conjectured that this was the true magnitude. The best known upper bound is…
For $m,n>0$ and $mn<0$ we estimate the sums \begin{equation*} \sum_{c \leq x} \frac{S(m,n,c,\chi)}{c}, \end{equation*} where the $S(m,n,c,\chi)$ are Kloosterman sums attached to a multiplier $\chi$ of weight $1/2$ on the full modular group.…
We study the distribution of the minimum spacing between eigenvalues of a random n by n unitary matrix. The minimum spacing scales as $n^{-4/3}$, not $n^{-2}$ as would be the case for n independent points on the unit circle, illustrating…
Motivated by a question of Defant and Propp (2020) regarding the connection between the degrees of noninvertibility of functions and those of their iterates, we address the combinatorial optimization problem of minimizing the sum of squares…