Waring's theorem for binary powers (Q2300161)

The authors consider an interesting variation on Waring's theorem, where the ordinary notion of integer power is replaced by a related notion inspired from formal language theory. More precisely, a positive integer \(N\) is a base-\(b\) \(k\)-th power if its base-\(b\) representation consists of \(k\) consecutive identical blocks. The main result of the paper says that for each integer \(k\geq1\), there exists an effectively computable positive integer \(n\) such that every sufficiently large multiple of \(E_k:=\gcd(2^k-1,k)\) is the sum of at most \(n\) binary \(k\)-th powers. Here notice that the GCD of the binary \(k\)-th powers is \(E_k\). Moreover, they show that the least such \(n\) is \(2^{O(k^2)}\). What concerns the bound it can be improved, the authors conjecture that every positive integer \(>147615\) is the sum of at most nine binary cubes and that the total number of exceptions is 4921. What concerns the basis, they say that analogous results to the main result hold for arbitrary integer bases \(b\geq2\).