Let be a fixed positive integer. The set consists of positive rational numbers. Prove that there exists an -element subset of with the following property: for every , , the sum of arbitrary (not necessarily distinct) elements of is not an element of .
, 2022
Solution
Without loss of generality we can consider the elements of as positive integers, as we can multiply them by the of their denominators, which does not affect the problem statement.
The arithmetic progression contains infinitely many primes, due to the Dirichlet theorem and . Let us fix a prime , larger than all the elements of , i.e., becomes a set of residues modulo . Consider the following set of residues:
for which the numerator of every successive fraction exceeds the previous one by . According to the choice of , all elements in are positive integers. Moreover
This means that the sum of arbitrary (at least 2 and at most , not necessarily distinct) elements of modulo , is not an element of !
Note that . Let . For each , the numbers form a permutation of (mod ), i.e., exactly of them are elements of ! Thus, there exists , such that among the numbers at least
are elements of modulo . It is easy to check, that the corresponding elements (at least in number) of , satisfying (mod ), fulfill the problem statement. In particular, so does every their subset of exactly elements.