Maximally Additively Reducible Subsets of the Integers
Gal Gross
Department of Mathematics
University of Toronto
Toronto, ON M5S 2E4
Canada
Abstract:
Let A, B ⊆ N be two finite sets of natural
numbers. We say that B is an additive divisor of A
if there exists some C ⊆ N with A =
B + C, where ‘+’ denotes the sumset operation,
also called Minkowski sum or pairwise sum. We prove that among
subsets of {0,1,...,k} containing 0 as an element, the full
set {0,1,...,k} has the most additive divisors. To remove the
restriction of having 0 as an element, we first prove a correspondence
between the sumset operation and binary lunar multiplication. Lunar
arithmetic (originally named "dismal arithmetic") is a kind of
min/max arithmetic introduced by Applegate, LeBrun, and Sloane. The
number of binary lunar divisors is related to restricted compositions
of integers—restricted in that the first part must be greater or
equal to all other parts. We establish some bounds on the number of such
compositions and conclude that {1,...,k} has the most additive
divisors among all subsets of {0,1,...,k}. These two results
prove two conjectures of LeBrun et al. regarding the maximal number
of lunar binary divisors, a special case of a more general conjecture
about lunar divisors in arbitrary bases. We prove this third conjecture
by introducing a sumset-like operation for multisets.
Full version: pdf,
dvi,
ps,
latex
(Concerned with sequences
A000045
A000073
A002378
A007059
A007318
A027444
A067398
A079500
A092921
A171000
A184957
A186523
A186636
A188288
A188524.)
Received January 17 2020; revised versions received January 18 2020; August 6 2020; August 23 2020; October 17 2020.
Published in Journal of Integer Sequences,
October 18 2020.
Return to
Journal of Integer Sequences home page