A problem of Rankin on sets without geometric progressions

Abstract: A geometric progression of length

k

and integer ratio is a set of numbers of the form

a, a r, d o t s, a r^{k - 1}

for some positive real number

a

and integer

r g e q 2

. For each integer

k g e q 3

, a greedy algorithm is used to construct a strictly decreasing sequence

(a_{i})_{i = 1}^{i n f t y}

of positive real numbers with

a_{1} = 1

such that the set [ G^{(k)} = �igcup_{i=1}^{infty} left(a_{2i} , a_{2i-1} ight] ] contains no geometric progression of length

k

and integer ratio. Moreover,

G^{(k)}

is a maximal subset of

(0, 1]

that contains no geometric progression of length

k

and integer ratio. It is also proved that there is a strictly increasing sequence

(A_{i})_{i = 1}^{i n f t y}

of positive integers with

A_{1} = 1

such that

a_{i} = 1 / A_{i}

for all

i = 1, 2, 3, l d o t s

. The set

G^{(k)}

gives a new lower bound for the maximum cardinality of a subset of the set of integers

1, 2, d o t s, n

that contains no geometric progression of length

k

and integer ratio.

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