Improvement of Mycielski's inequality for non-natural disjoint covering systems of \({\mathbb{Z}}\) (Q1087900)

Denote \(a(n)=\{x\in {\mathbb{Z}}\), \(x\equiv a\) (mod n)\(\}\). The system \(a_ i(n_ i)\), \(i=1,...,k\) will be called disjoint covering system (DCS) if the sets \(a_ i(n_ i)\) are disjoint and represent a partition of \({\mathbb{Z}}\). The numbers \(n_ i\) are called modulus of DCS. A DCS S is said to be natural if there exists a finite sequence \(S_ 0,S_ 1,...,S_ r\) of DCS such that \(S_ 0={\mathbb{Z}}\), \(S_ r=S\) and \(S_{i+1}\) arises from \(S_ i\) partitioning of one of its classes into \(p_ i\) (prime) classes of equal modulus. It was conjectured by Mycielski and Sierpinski and proved by the reviewer that for every DCS we have \(k\geq 1+\sum^{t}_{j=1}\lambda_ j(p_ j- 1),\) where \(\prod^{t}_{j=1}p_ j^{\lambda_ j}\) is the standard form of a modulus \(n_ i.\) In the present paper this inequality is strengthened to \[ k\geq 1+p_ 3+\sum^{t}_{j=1}\lambda_ j(p_ j-1) \] for all nonnatural DCS, where \(p_ 3\) is the third smallest prime divisor of least common multiple of the modulus.