Set-polynomials and polynomial extension of the Hales-Jewett theorem (Q1808856): Difference between revisions

In this paper a generalization of the polynomial Hales-Jewett (PHJ) type extension of the polynomial van der Waerden theorem is proved. Its simplest variant says: If \(r,d,q\in{\mathbb{N}}\), then there exits \(N(r,d,q)\in{\mathbb{N}}\) such that, for any \(r\)-coloring of the set of subsets of \(V=\{1,\dots,N\}^d\times \{1,\dots,q\}\), there exist a set \(a\subset V\), and a non-empty set \(\gamma\subseteq \{1,\dots,N\}\), such that \(a\cap(\gamma^d\times \{1,\dots,q\})=\emptyset\), and the sets \(a\), \(a\cup(\gamma^d\times \{1\})\), \(a\cup(\gamma^d\times \{2\})\), \dots, \(a\cup(\gamma^d\times \{q\})\) are all of the same color. The paper is divided into 9 main sections. The introduction (labeled as Section 0) is devoted to a discussion of the connections of the proved generalization of the previous related results and prepares the sole for developing the used set-polynomial machinery and the methods of topological dynamics. Here the set-polynomials are defined via the operations of union (i.e. addition) and Cartesian multiplication of finite sets. Thus set-polynomials are polynomials like expressions having finite sets as coefficients, e.g. as monomials \(\gamma^d\times \{\ell\}\) of degree \(d\). The dynamics is brought into play through an action \(\mathcal{F}(W)\), where \(W\) is a given set, on a topological set \(X\) which is a mapping \(T\) from \(\mathcal{F}(W)\) into the set of continuous self-mappings of \(X\), \(a\to T^a\), satisfying that for any \(a,b\in\mathcal{F}(W)\) with \(a\cap b=\emptyset\) one has \(T^{a\cup b}=T^aT^b\). PHJ can now be stated thus: Given \(r,d,q\in{\mathbb{N}}\), there exits \(N(r,d,q)\in{\mathbb{N}}\) such that, for \(V=\{1,\dots,N\}^d\times \{1,\dots,q\}\) and for any \(r\)-coloring of \(\mathcal{F}(V)\), there exist \(a\subset V\) and a non-empty set \(\gamma\subseteq \{1,\dots,N\}\) such that \(a\cap(\gamma^d\times \{1,\dots,q\})=\emptyset\), and the sets \(a\), \(a\cup(\gamma^d\times \{1\})\), \(a\cup(\gamma^d\times \{2\})\), \dots, \(a\cup(\gamma^d\times \{q\})\) are all of the same color. Section 1 demonstrates the method of proof of PHJ on the background of two special cases, the `linear' (i.e. \(d=1\)) variant of the Hales-Jewett theorem and the simplest non-trivial non-linear case of a topological variant of PHJ. In Section 2 basics of set-polynomials and their formalism are developed. In Section 3 the formalism of the previous section is further developed and used to reformulate the main result in the set-polynomial language: If \(A\) is a system consisting of set-polynomials with empty constant term, then \(A\) is a system of (chromatic) recurrence. This result is then proved in Section 6, while Sections 4 and 5 contain some necessary technical supporting results. Section 7 is devoted to some combinatorial results derived from PHJ, and corollaries pertaining to topological recurrence. The last section is devoted to the abstract polynomiality and brings some group-theoretical corollaries of PHJ.