Every function is the representation function of an additive basis for the integers (Q1780141): Difference between revisions

Let \(\mathbb{Z}\) be the set of the integers, \(\mathbb{N}\) the set of the natural numbers and \(\mathbb{N}_0= \mathbb{N}\cup\{0\}\). For \(A\subseteq\mathbb{Z}\) and \(2\leq h\in\mathbb{N}\) the sumset \(hA\) is defined as \[ hA:= \Biggl\{\sum^h_{i=1} a_i\mid a_i\in A\text{ for }i= 1,\dots, h\Biggr\}. \] A set \(A\) is called a basis of order \(h\) for \(\mathbb{Z}\) if \(hA = \mathbb{Z}\) and \(A\) is an asymptotic basis of order \(h\) for \(\mathbb{Z}\) if \(hA= \mathbb{Z}\setminus M\) (\(M\subset\mathbb{Z}\) a finite set). By \(r_{A,h}(n)\) is denoted the number of representations of \(n\) in the form \(n= \sum^h_{i=1} a_i\), where \(a_i\in A\) \((i= 1,\dots, h)\) and \(a_1\leq a_2\leq\cdots\leq a_h\). The function \(r_{A,h}\) is called the representation function of order \(h\) of the set \(A\). For \(A\subseteq\mathbb{Z}\) is \(A(-x,x):= \text{card}(\{a\in A\mid|a|\leq x\})\). The main result of this paper is the following theorem: Let \(f: \mathbb{Z}\to\mathbb{N}_0\cup\{\infty\}\) be a function such that the set \(f^{-1}(0)\) is finite. Let \(\varphi: \mathbb{N}_0\to\mathbb{R}\) be a nonnegative function such that \(\lim_{x\to\infty} \varphi(x)=\infty\). For every \(h\geq 2\) there exist infinitely many asymptotic bases \(A\) of order \(h\) for \(\mathbb{Z}\) such that \[ r_{A,h}(n)= f(n)\text{ for all }n\in\mathbb{Z},\text{ and }A(-x,x)\leq\varphi(x)\text{ for all }x\geq 0. \] The proof uses a constructive method. It is remarked that an analogous theorem can be obtained for sumsets with pairwise distinct elements from the set \(A\) by an analogous method. These results are in connection with a conjecture of \textit{P. Erdős} and \textit{P. Turán} [J. Lond. Math. Soc. 16, 212--215 (1941; Zbl 0061.07301)]. They conjectured that if \(A\subset\mathbb{N}_0\) is an asymptotic basis of order \(h\) for \(\mathbb{N}\), then the representation function \(r_{A,h}\) is unbounded, i.e. \(\lim_{n\to\infty}\,\sup r_{A,h}(n)= \infty\). This is an unsolved problem. Finally, the author discusses some open problems.