The Prouhet-Tarry-Escott problem, indecomposability of polynomials and Diophantine equations (Q2155868): Difference between revisions

In this interesting paper the authors relate three topics: the Prouhet-Tarry-Escott problem, the indecomposability of polynomials and Diophantine equations. To be more precise, the following problem is considered: Let \(r\in\mathbb{N}\). Describe those positive integers \(n\) such that the set \(\{1,\ldots, n\}\) can be partitioned into sets \(A_{0},\ldots, A_{t}\) with \(|A_{0}|=r, t\geq 2\) and \(k=|A_{1}|=\ldots=|A_{t}|\geq 2\) such that all symmetric polynomials \(\sigma_{1}, \ldots, \sigma_{k-1}\) of the elements of \(A_{i}, i=1, \ldots, t,\) coincide. For \(r=1, t=2, n=2k+1\) this is classical Prouhet-Tarry-Escott problem. The authors prove that if \(r\) is small enough with respect to \(n\) (in fact, as is proved in the paper, it is enough to have \(n>2r^{3/2}+5r+8\)), then only \(k=2\) is possible and the sets \(A_{i}\) have the special property. Next, it is shown that the existence of the partition under consideration is equivalent with the existence of a set \(A\subset \mathbb{N}\) such that the polynomial of the form \(f(x)=\prod_{a\in A}(x-a)\) is decomposable over \(\mathbb{Q}\), i.e., there exist polynomials \(h_{1}, h_{2}\in\mathbb{Q}[x]\) of degree \(\geq 2\) such that \(f(x)=h_{1}(h_{2}(x))\). Finally, the obtained results are used to the construction of a broad family of polynomials \(F\) having only integer roots and the property that the Diophantine equation \(F(x)=P(y)\), where \(P\in\mathbb{Q}\) is of degree \(\geq 2\), has only finitely many solutions in integers, provided \(P\) satisfies certain technical (but natural) assumptions. These results are ineffective. Some effective results are presented in the case of special sets \(A\) and polynomials of the form \(P(x)=ax^l+b\in\mathbb{Q}[x], l\geq 2\).