Extending a theorem of Pillai to quadratic sequences (Q2829177)

The authors extend a theorem of Pillai to several types of quadratic sequence.NEWLINENEWLINENEWLINENEWLINEA sequence of integers has property \(P_1\) if it has a term that is relatively prime to every other terms in the sequence. For a sequence of integers \(S\), let \(g_S\) be the smallest integer \(\geq 2\) so that there is a sequence of \(g_S\) consecutive terms of \(S\) for which property \(P_1\) fails. The theorem of Pillai being extended in the article states that for the sequence of positive integers \(\mathbb N\), \(g_{\mathbb N} = 17\). In fact, Pillai showed that for each \(m \geq 17\), there are infinitely many sequencesNEWLINEof consecutive positive integers of length \(m\) for which the property \(P_1\) fails.NEWLINENEWLINENEWLINENEWLINEIn this paper, the authors determine \(g_S\) for \(S= (f(n))_{n \in \mathbb N}\) whereNEWLINE{\parindent=0.7cmNEWLINE\begin{itemize}\item[--] \(f(x) = x^2+bx +c\),NEWLINE\item[--] \(f(x) = 2^kx^2 +c\), except when \(k=2\) and \(c=-17\), andNEWLINE\item[--] \(f(x) = ax^2+bx+c\), when \(b^2-4ac \in \{0,a^2,-q^k\}\), where \(q\) isNEWLINEan odd prime and \(k \geq 1\).NEWLINENEWLINENEWLINE\end{itemize}}NEWLINEThey relate the problem of determining \(g_S\) to a general combinatoric problem about ``covering'' of interval of the form \([1,2,\ldots, m]\) by a certainly type of sequence of positive integers \(H\) (described in Section~2 and~3). The author also mentioned that for the question of whether \(g_{(f(n):n \in \mathbb N)}\) exists remains open for general quadratic polynomial \(f(x) =ax^2 + bx +c \in \mathbb Z[x]\) (\(a > 0\)).NEWLINENEWLINENEWLINENEWLINEBesides proving the results aforementioned, the authors give a very nice review of the history and the existing literature about Pillai's theorem and its various generalizations.