Erd\H{o}s covering systems
From MaRDI portal
Publication:6415977
DOI10.1007/S10474-020-01048-ZarXiv2211.01417MaRDI QIDQ6415977FDOQ6415977
Authors: Paul Balister, Béla Bollobás, Robert Morris, Julian Sahasrabudhe, Marius Tiba 
Publication date: 2 November 2022
Abstract: A covering system is a finite collection of arithmetic progressions whose union is the set of integers. The study of these objects was initiated by ErdH{o}s in 1950, and over the following decades he asked many questions about them. Most famously, he asked whether there exist covering systems with distinct moduli whose minimum modulus is arbitrarily large. This problem was resolved in 2015 by Hough, who showed that in any such system the minimum modulus is at most . The purpose of this note is to give a gentle exposition of a simpler and stronger variant of Hough's method, which was recently used to answer several other questions about covering systems. We hope that this technique, which we call the distortion method, will have many further applications in other combinatorial settings.
Edge subsets with special properties (factorization, matching, partitioning, covering and packing, etc.) (05C70) Congruences; primitive roots; residue systems (11A07) Combinatorial aspects of packing and covering (05B40) Arithmetic progressions (11B25)
This page was built for publication: Erd\H{o}s covering systems
Report a bug (only for logged in users!)Click here to report a bug for this page (MaRDI item Q6415977)
