Maths Olympiad Prep

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, 2012

Number theory Difficulty 7.9 National Olympiad, round 2 Prove it European Girls' Mathematical Olympiad (EGMO)

Problem:
A set AA of integers is called sum-full if AA+AA \subseteq A+A, i.e. each element aAa \in A is the sum of some pair of (not necessarily different) elements b,cAb, c \in A. A set AA of integers is said to be zero-sum-free if 00 is the only integer that cannot be expressed as the sum of the elements of a finite nonempty subset of AA.

Does there exist a sum-full zero-sum-free set of integers?

Solution

Solution:
The set A={F2n:n=1,2,}{F2n+1:n=1,2,}A=\{F_{2 n}: n=1,2, \ldots\} \cup\{-F_{2 n+1}: n=1,2, \ldots\}, where FkF_{k} is the kthk^{\text{th}} Fibonacci number (F1=1F_{1}=1, F2=1F_{2}=1, Fk+2=Fk+1+FkF_{k+2}=F_{k+1}+F_{k} for k1k \geq 1) qualifies for an example. We then have F2n=F2n+2+(F2n+1)F_{2 n}=F_{2 n+2}+(-F_{2 n+1}) and F2n+1=(F2n+3)+F2n+2-F_{2 n+1}=(-F_{2 n+3})+F_{2 n+2} for all n1n \geq 1, so AA is sum-full (and even with unique representations). On the other hand, we can never have
0=i=1sF2nij=1tF2nj+1 0=\sum_{i=1}^{s} F_{2 n_{i}}-\sum_{j=1}^{t} F_{2 n_{j}+1}
owing to the fact that Zeckendorf representations are known to be unique.

It remains to be shown that all nonzero values can be represented as sums of distinct numbers 1,2,3,5,8,13,21,1,-2,3,-5,8,-13,21, \ldots. This may be done using a greedy algorithm: when representing nn, the number largest in magnitude that is used is the element m=±Fkm= \pm F_{k} of AA that is closest to 00 subject to having the same sign as nn and mn|m| \geq |n|. That this algorithm terminates without using any member of AA twice is a straightforward induction on kk; the base case is k=2k=2 (m=1m=1) and the induction hypothesis is that for all nn for which the above algorithm starts with ±F\pm F_{\ell} with k\ell \leq k, it terminates without having used any member of AA twice and without having used any ±Fj\pm F_{j} with j>j>\ell.

Remark (James Aaronson and Adam P Goucher). Let nn be a positive integer, and write u=2nu=2^{n}; we claim that the set
{1,2,4,,2n1,u,u+1,(2u+1),3u+2,(5u+3),8u+5,} \{1,2,4, \ldots, 2^{n-1},-u, u+1,-(2 u+1), 3 u+2,-(5 u+3), 8 u+5, \ldots\}
is a sum-full zero-sum-free set. The proof is similar to that used for the standard examples.

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Source: MathNet, licensed CC-BY-4.0. Statement reproduced verbatim; metadata (topic, difficulty) added by this project.