Upper bounds for the order of an additive basis obtained by removing a finite subset of a given basis (Q1024406): Difference between revisions

Let \(A\) be an (asymptotic) additive basis of \textit{order} \(G(A)=h\). That is, \(A\) is a set of non negative integers such that the set \[ \{x_1+\cdots+x_h;~x_i\in A,~1\leq i\leq h\} \] contains all sufficiently large integers and \(h\) is minimal. It is known that, for finite subsets \(X\) of \(A\), the set \(B:=A\setminus X\) is an additive basis if and only if the, obviously necessary, condition \[ \gcd\{b-b';~b\in B,b'\in B\}=1, \] holds. The open problem is to estimate, in this case, the order \(G(B)\geq h\) of \(B\). \textit{J. C. M. Nash} and \textit{M. B. Nathanson} [J. Number Theory 20, 363--372 (1985; Zbl 0578.10056)] obtained an upper bound for \(G(B)\) which is polynomial in \(h\) with degree \(k+1\), \(k:=|X|\), whose coefficients depend only on \(k\). In the paper under review, the author proves that \(G(B)\) is bounded above by the following polynomial of degree 3 in \(h\) \[ {{h(h+3)}\over 2}+d{{h(h-1)(h+4)}\over 6} \] where \(d\) depends on the ``form'' of \(X\) as follows: \[ d=d(X):={{\text{diam}(X)}\over{\gcd \{x-y~;~x,y\in X\} }}. \] In a second theorem, the author proves that, for a given set \(A\), \(G(B)\) is bounded above by a polynomial of degree 2 in \(h\), whose coefficients depend on \(X\) \textit{and} on \(A\). Reviewer's remark: \textit{X.-D. Jia} in two papers [ J. Number Theory 28, No. 2, 205--218 (1988; Zbl 0637.10040) and J. Number Theory 37, No. 1, 37--46 (1991; Zbl 0715.11002)] constructed, for each \(h\), an additive basis \(A\) of order \(h\) having a subset \(X_A\) of cardinality \(k\) such that \(G(A\setminus X_A)\geq C_kh^{k+1}\), where \(C_k\) depends only on \(k\). This means that the quantity \(d=d(X_A)\) of the present paper increases rapidly for the sets \(X_A\) in Jia's construction, according to the above inequalities.