Journal of Integer Sequences, Vol. 23 (2020), Article 20.10.5

Maximally Additively Reducible Subsets of the Integers


Gal Gross
Department of Mathematics
University of Toronto
Toronto, ON M5S 2E4
Canada

Abstract:

Let A, BN be two finite sets of natural numbers. We say that B is an additive divisor of A if there exists some CN 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.


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(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.


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