Define the Fibonacci numbers as follows: for all positive integers .
Prove that there is a positive integer with the following property: among the terms of any non-constant arithmetic progression of positive integers of length , there must be a term, when expressed as a sum of Fibonacci numbers, requiring at least 2024 of them ('s can be repeated).
Solution
We adopt the following convention: when writing a positive integer as a sum of Fibonacci numbers, we use the largest possible Fibonacci numbers. For example, although can be written as , we write it as .
Let be a positive integer and let be the set of Fibonacci numbers. Define set addition . Let be the length of the longest arithmetic progression contained in the set .
We will prove by mathematical induction that exists and is finite for every ; then taking gives what we want.
Base case: when , , because the longest arithmetic progression in is , of length .
Next we prove two lemmas.
Lemma 1. If , and can be written as a sum of terms , each satisfying , then can also be written as a sum of terms satisfying , among which appears.
Proof of Lemma 1. Let . Suppose cannot be written in such a form. Note that . If
- among the there are two consecutive Fibonacci numbers , we change them to .
- among the there are two repeated Fibonacci numbers , and these two terms are not , we change them to .
We keep performing these two operations. If in this process never appears, then we can write as , with , and, apart from , there are no repeated or consecutive Fibonacci numbers. The maximum value of such a number is
a contradiction. Hence can be written as a sum of Fibonacci numbers each at most , among which appears. □
In particular, if , and can be written as a sum of Fibonacci numbers, then we may require that one of them be .
Lemma 2. Given a positive integer , then for any arithmetic progression of positive integers of length
there exists an integer such that at least terms of this arithmetic progression lie in the interval .
Proof of Lemma 2. The case needs no proof, so assume . If through all lie in some interval , the conclusion holds. Otherwise, there is some that cuts through this range, so we may write , where .
Note that . And when , we have . Therefore from , we can obtain
so the -th term through the -th term all lie in the interval . □
Remark: The estimate in this part is not the tightest possible; for instance, can be replaced by any between and , and can be replaced by any number satisfying .
Finally we prove that . By the induction hypothesis is finite, so for any arithmetic progression of length , there exists a sub-progression of length lying in some interval . By Lemma 1 we know that if the can all be written as sums of Fibonacci terms, then we may require that appear among these terms. Thus is an arithmetic progression of length , each of whose terms can be written as a sum of Fibonacci numbers, contradicting the definition of . Hence is at most . This completes the proof. □