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Erdős Problem 871

References:

    erdosproblems.com/871

    [ErNa88] Erdős, Paul and Nathanson, Melvyn B., Partitions of bases into disjoint unions of bases. J. Number Theory (1988), 1-9.

    [ErNa89] Erdős, Paul and Nathanson, Melvyn B., Additive bases with many representations. Acta Arith. (1989), 399-406.

namespace Erdos871

Let $A$ be an additive basis of order $2$, and suppose $1_A\ast 1_A(n)\to \infty$ as $n\to \infty$. Can $A$ be partitioned into two disjoint additive bases of order $2$?

A question of Erdős and Nathanson [ErNa88], who proved this is true if $1_A\ast 1_A(n) > c\log n$ (for all large $n$) for some constant $c>(\log\frac{4}{3})^{-1}$. Erdős and Nathanson [ErNa89] also proved that for every $t$ there exists a basis $A$ of order $2$ such that $1_A\ast 1_A(n)\geq t$ for all large $n$ and yet $A$ cannot be partitioned into two disjoint additive bases. This has been disproved by Larsen using Claude Opus 4.5 - in fact only a small modification of the argument of [ErNa89] is required.

@[category research solved, AMS 11, formal_proof using lean4 at "https://github.com/plby/lean-proofs/blob/main/src/v4.29.1/ErdosProblems/Erdos871.lean"] theorem declaration uses 'sorry'erdos_871 : answer(False) (A : Set ), (∀ᶠ n in Filter.atTop, a A, b A, a + b = n) ( t, ∀ᶠ n in Filter.atTop, pairs : Finset ( × ), pairs.card t p pairs, p.1 A p.2 A p.1 + p.2 = n p.1 p.2) (B C : Set ), ( x, x A x B x C) Disjoint B C (∀ᶠ n in Filter.atTop, a B, b B, a + b = n) (∀ᶠ n in Filter.atTop, a C, b C, a + b = n) := False (A : Set ), ((∀ᶠ (n : ) in Filter.atTop, a A, b A, a + b = n) (t : ), ∀ᶠ (n : ) in Filter.atTop, pairs, pairs.card t p pairs, p.1 A p.2 A p.1 + p.2 = n p.1 p.2) B C, (∀ (x : ), x A x B x C) Disjoint B C (∀ᶠ (n : ) in Filter.atTop, a B, b B, a + b = n) ∀ᶠ (n : ) in Filter.atTop, a C, b C, a + b = n All goals completed! 🐙 end Erdos871