The two-dimensional Prouhet-Tarry-Escott problem (Q2370191)

The classical Prouhet-Tarry-Escott problem (PTE) asks, given positive integers \(n\) and \(m\) to find distinct sets of integers \(\{ a_1,\dots,a_n \}\) and \(\{ b_1,\dots,b_n\}\) such that \[ \sum_{i=1}^n a_i^k = \sum_{i=1}^n b_i^k \] for all \(k=1,\dots,m\); this is an example of a multigrade equation. In the paper under review, the authors consider the following higher-dimensional generalization of PTE, which they denote by \(\text{PTE}_r\): given positive integers \(k,n,r\), find two different sets of points in \(\mathbb Z^r\), \(\{ \mathbf{a}_1,\dots,\mathbf{a}_n \}\) and \(\{ \mathbf{b}_1,\dots,\mathbf{b}_n\}\), such that \[ \sum_{i=1}^n P(\mathbf{a}_i) = \sum_{i=1}^n P(\mathbf{b}_i) \] for all polynomials \(P \in \mathbb Z[\mathbf{x}]\) in \(r\) variables of total degree \(\leq k\). Then the classical PTE becomes \(\text{PTE}_1\) in the authors' terminology. In the present paper, the authors mostly study the case \(r=2\). They use a geometric approach originating in the field of Discrete Tomography to give parametric solutions to \(\text{PTE}_2\) for \(k=1,2,3,4,5\). Specifically, the authors formulate the following problem, denoted as \(\text{GP}_2\): given positive integers \(k\) and \(n\), find a set of distinct vectors \(\mathbf{x}_1,\dots,\mathbf{x}_{k+1} \in \mathbb Z^2\) and two proper sets \(F_1\) and \(F_2\) of \(n\) points from \(\mathbb Z^2\) such that for each \(1 \leq i \leq k+1\), \(F_1\) and \(F_2\) have an equal number of points along each line parallel to \(\mathbf{x}_i\) (here a set is called \textit{proper} if it does not consist of points of the form \((a,\dots,a)\) for some \(a \in \mathbb Z\)). The authors show that every solution to \(\text{GP}_2\) leads to a solution to \(\text{PTE}_2\) for the same \(k\), however they prove that \(\text{GP}_2\) is only solvable for \(k=1,2,3,4,5\). The paper concludes with some additional results for the general problem \(\text{PTE}_r\) and for \(\text{PTE}\) for Gaussian integers.