is a set of complex numbers such that if , then and . Suppose that the number of elements of with absolute value at most 1 is finite. What is the largest possible value of ?
Solution
First, if contained some with absolute value , then (by the first condition) every power of would be in , and would contain infinitely many different numbers of absolute value . This is a contradiction. Now suppose contains some number of absolute value 1 and argument . If is not an integer multiple of , then has some power whose argument lies strictly between and . Then has absolute value between 0 and 1 , since lies on the unit circle with angle strictly between and . But , so this is a contradiction. This shows that the only possible elements of with absolute value \leq 1 are 0 and the points on the unit circle whose arguments are multiples of , giving . To show that is attainable, we need to show that there exists a possible set containing all these points. Let be the set of all numbers of the form , where are integers are is a complex cube root of 1 . Since is closed under multiplication and addition. Then, if we let be the set of numbers such that has the required properties, and it contains the 13 complex numbers specified, so we're in business.