On the nonvanishing of representation functions of some special sequences (Q488281)

Let \(\mathbb{N}\) be the set of nonnegative integers. Let \(A\) be a set of \(\mathbb{N}\). By \(R_1(A,n),R_2(A,n),R_3(A,n)\) we denote the number of solutions of \(n=a+a'\) with \(a,a'\in A\), \(n=a+a'\) with \(a,a'\in A, a<a'\), and \(n=a+a'\) with \(a,a'\in A, a\leq a'\), respectively. Sárközy asked whether there exist sets \(A,B\subset \mathbb{N}\) with infinite symmetric difference such that \(R_i(A,n)=R_i(B,n)\) holds for all sufficiently large integers \(n\). Several authors made contributions about this problem (see [\textit{Y. Chen} and \textit{B. Wang} [Acta Arith. 110, No. 3, 299--303 (2003; Zbl 1032.11008)], \textit{V. F. Lev} [Electron. J. Comb. 11, No. 1, Research paper R78, 6 p. (2004; Zbl 1068.11006)], \textit{C. Sándor} [Integers 4, Paper A18, 5 p. (2004; Zbl 1135.11305)], \textit{M. Tang} [Discrete Math. 308, No. 12, 2614--2616 (2008; Zbl 1162.05003)]). In particular, \textit{Y. Chen} and \textit{M. Tang} [J. Number Theory 129, No. 11, 2689--2695 (2009; Zbl 1239.11016)] proved the following two theorems. Theorem 1. Let \(N\) be a positive integer and \(A\subset \mathbb{N}\) satisfying \(R_2(A,n)=R_2(\mathbb{N}\setminus A,n)\) for all \(n\geq 2N-1\). Then \(R_2(A,n)\geq 1\) for all \(n\geq 12N^2-10N-2\), except for \(A=A_0\) or \(A=A_1\), where \(A_0=\{n\in \mathbb{N}: 2\mid D(n)\}\) and \(A_1=\{n\in \mathbb{N}: 2\nmid D(n)\}\) and \(D(n)\) denotes the number of ones in the binary representation of \(n\). For \(A=A_0\) or \(A=A_1\), we have \(R_2(A, 2^{2n+1}-1)=R_2(\mathbb{N}\setminus A, 2^{2n+1}-1)=0\) for all \(n\geq 0\). Theorem 2. Let \(N\) be a positive integer and \(A\subset \mathbb{N}\) satisfying \(R_3(A,n)=R_3(\mathbb{N}\setminus A,n)\) for all \(n\geq 2N-1\). Then \(R_3(A,n)\geq 1\) for all \(n\geq 12N^2+2N\). It is asked whether the quadratic bounds in Theorems 1 and 2 above can be improved. More precisely, \textit{Y. Chen} [Sci. China, Math. 54, No. 7, 1317--1331 (2011; Zbl 1236.11017)] raised the following two problems. Problem A. Does there exist an absolute constant \(c\), such that for any positive integer \(N\), \(A\subset \mathbb{N}\) satisfying \(R_2(A,n)=R_2(\mathbb{N}\setminus A,n)\) for all \(n\geq 2N-1\), and \(A\neq A_0, A_1, \) we have \(R_2(A,n)\geq 1\) for all \(n\geq c N\)? Problem B. Does there exist an absolute constant \(c'\), such that for any positive integer \(N\) and \(A\subset \mathbb{N}\) satisfying \(R_3(A,n)=R_3(\mathbb{N}\setminus A, n)\) for all \(n\geq 2N-1\), we have \(R_3(A,n)\geq 1\) for all \(n\geq c'N\)? In this paper, the author proves that both problems have an affirmative answer.