On the discrepancy of quasi-progressions (Q1010831)

Summary: A quasi-progression, also known as a Beatty sequence, consists of successive multiples of a real number, with each multiple rounded down to the largest integer not exceeding it. In 1986, Beck showed that given any 2-colouring, the hypergraph of quasi-progressions contained in \(\{0,1,\dots,n \}\) corresponding to almost all real numbers in \((1, \infty)\) have discrepancy at least \(\log^{*} n\), the inverse of the tower function. We improve the lower bound to \((\log n)^{1/4 - o(1)}\), and also show that there is some quasi-progression with discrepancy at least \((1/50) n^{1/6}\). The results remain valid even if the 2-colouring is replaced by a partial colouring of positive density.