Determine all positive real numbers such that there exists a positive integer and sets satisfying the following conditions:
(1) every set has infinitely many elements;
(2) every pair of distinct sets and do not share any common element;
(3) the union of sets is the set of all integers;
(4) for every set , the positive difference of any pair of elements in is at least . (posed by Yuan Hanhui)
Solution
The answer of the problem is the set of all positive real numbers less than . We consider two cases.
Case I We assume that . Then there is a positive such that . We define and
for . Then is a partition of the set of positive integers satisfying the conditions of the problem.
Case II We assume that . We claim that no such partition exists. To prove by contradiction, we assume on the contrary that is a partition satisfying the conditions of the problem. Let . For every with , let . We assume that with . We have
implying that , or . Since is a partition, for and . It follows that
which is impossible. Hence our assumption was wrong and such a partition does not exist for every positive integer .
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