Applications des entiers à diviseurs denses (Q4385589)

Paul Erdős raised and investigated many interesting problems associated with divisibility, prompting other mathematicians to take up the challenge also. The contribution made in the paper under review concerns an estimation of the exact order of magnitude of certain quantities defined below. Let \(E\) be a set of integers exceeding 1 such that \(\sum_{e\in E} e^{-1} \leq 1\), and denote the number of positive integers \(n\leq x\) with no divisor in \(E\) by \(F(x,E)\). Write \(H(x)= \min_E F(x,E)\). In [J. Number Theory 14, 260--268 (1982; Zbl 0481.10045)], \textit{I. Z. Ruzsa} showed that \(H(x)\gg x/ \log x\). In Theorem 1, the present author establishes that \[ H(x)\ll x/ \log x \quad\text{for all }x\geq 2. \] Let \(g(x)\) denote the greatest number of distinct positive integers \(n_1,n_2, \dots, n_{g(x)}\) less than \(x\) with the property that \(\text{lcm} [n_i,n_{i+1}] \leq x\) for each \(i\). Let \(f(x)\) denote the corresponding quantity for the property that \(n_i \mid n_{i+1}\) or \(n_{i+1}\mid n_i\) for each \(i\), and define \(f^*(x)\) similarly with the added restriction that \(n_i\geq \sqrt x\) for each \(i\). Theorem 2 states that for all \(x\geq 2\) \[ \frac{x}{\log x} \ll f^*(x)\leq f(x)\leq g(x)\ll \frac{x}{\log x}. \] The author studied \(f^*(x)\) in [Sémin. Théor. Nombres, Paris 1991--92, Prog. Math. 116, 217--245 (1994; Zbl 0822.11064)], and \(g(x)\) was investigated by \textit{P. Erdős}, \textit{R. Freud} and \textit{N. Hegyvári} in [Acta Math. Hung. 41, 169--176 (1983; Zbl 0518.10063)].