The supremum of autoconvolutions, with applications to additive number theory

We adapt a number-theoretic technique of Yu to prove a purely analytic theorem: if f(x) is in L^1 and L^2, is nonnegative, and is supported on an interval of length I, then the supremum of the convolution f*f is at least 0.631 \| f \|_1^2 / I. This improves the previous bound of 0.591389 \| f \|_1^2 / I. Consequently, we improve the known bounds on several related number-theoretic problems. For a subset A of {1,2, ..., n}, let g be the maximum multiplicity of any element of the multiset {a+b: a,b in A}. Our main corollary is the inequality gn>0.631|A|^2, which holds uniformly for all g, n, and A.Comment: 17 pages. to appear in IJ

A problem of Rankin on sets without geometric progressions

A geometric progression of length $k$ and integer ratio is a set of numbers of the form $\{a,ar,\dots,ar^{k-1}\}$ for some positive real number $a$ and integer $r\geq 2$. For each integer $k \geq 3$, a greedy algorithm is used to construct a strictly decreasing sequence $(a_i)_{i=1}^{\infty}$ of positive real numbers with $a_1 = 1$ such that the set $$G^{(k)} = \bigcup_{i=1}^{\infty} \left(a_{2i} , a_{2i-1} \right]$$ contains no geometric progression of length $k$ and integer ratio. Moreover, $G^{(k)}$ is a maximal subset of $(0,1]$ that contains no geometric progression of length $k$ and integer ratio. It is also proved that there is a strictly increasing sequence $(A_i)_{i=1}^{\infty}$ of positive integers with $A_1 = 1$ such that $a_i = 1/A_i$ for all $i = 1,2,3,\ldots$. The set $G^{(k)}$ gives a new lower bound for the maximum cardinality of a subset of the set of integers $\{1,2,\dots,n\}$ that contains no geometric progression of length $k$ and integer ratio.Comment: 15 page

Fraenkel's Partition and Brown's Decomposition

Denote the sequence ([ (n-x') / x ])_{n=1}^\infty by B(x, x'), a so-called Beatty sequence. Fraenkel's Partition Theorem gives necessary and sufficient conditions for B(x, x') and B(y, y') to tile the positive integers, i.e., for B(x, x') \cap B(y, y') = \emptyset and B(x, x') \cup B(y, y') = {1,2, 3, ...}. Fix 0 < x < 1, and let c_k = 1 if k \in B(x, 0), and c_k = 0 otherwise, i.e., c_k=[ (k+1) / x ] - [ k / x]. For a positive integer m let C_m be the binary word c_1c_2c_3... c_m. Brown's Decomposition gives integers q_1, q_2, ..., independent of m and growing at least exponentially, and integers t, z_0, z_1, z_2, ..., z_t (depending on m) such that C_m = C_{q_t}^{z_t}C_{q_{t-1}}^{z_{t-1}} ... C_{q_1}^{z_1}C_{q_0}^{z_0}. In other words, Brown's Decomposition gives a sparse set of initial segments of C_\infty and an explicit decomposition of C_m (for every m) into a product of these initial segments.Comment: 19 page

Irrational numbers associated to sequences without geometric progressions

Let s and k be integers with s \geq 2 and k \geq 2. Let g_k^{(s)}(n) denote the cardinality of the largest subset of the set {1,2,..., n} that contains no geometric progression of length k whose common ratio is a power of s. Let r_k(\ell) denote the cardinality of the largest subset of the set {0,1,2,\ldots, \ell -1\} that contains no arithmetric progression of length k. The limit $$\lim_{n\rightarrow \infty} \frac{g_k^{(s)}(n)}{n} = (s-1) \sum_{m=1}^{\infty} \left(\frac{1}{s} \right)^{\min \left(r_k^{-1}(m)\right)}$$ exists and converges to an irrational number.Comment: 7 page

On sequences without geometric progressions

An improved upper bound is obtained for the density of sequences of positive integers that contain no k-term geometric progression.Comment: 4 pages; minor correctio