Arithmetic progression in a cyclic Bohr set Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-09-24
When is prime, simultaneous approximation of the frequencies shows that contains a centered arithmetic progression of length at least
Color-focused arithmetic progression Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-09-24
Several monochromatic arithmetic progressions are color-focused when they have different colors and extend by one further term to the same point. Such focused families give an elementary induction proof of the length-three case of the Van der Waerden theorem.
Common difference Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-09-24
The common difference of an arithmetic progression is the fixed difference between consecutive terms.
Write and identify each character with a residue . Partition the -dimensional torus into cubes of side , where is comparable to . Applying the pigeonhole principle to the points
gives a nonzero residue satisfying
Consequently whenever . After allowing for integer parts and the small values of , this produces the centered arithmetic progression
of length at least .
Solved by gpt-5.6-sol high.
Part c gives with . By the arithmetic progression in a cyclic Bohr set, contains a centered progression of length at least
Its translate by is the required arithmetic progression in .
Solved by gpt-5.6-sol high.
The Hales-Jewett theorem states that for positive integers there is such that every -coloring of the words contains a monochromatic combinatorial line.
Here is the standard focused-line proof. Induct on the alphabet size , the case being immediate. Assume the result for and every number of colors. For , prove inductively that some dimension has the following alternative: either there is a monochromatic combinatorial line, or there are color-focused lines, meaning that the lines without their common focus are monochromatic in distinct colors. For , restrict to words on and use the induction hypothesis on .
For the step from to , let work for and view a longer word as . Color each by the complete pattern
which uses at most colors. Taking gives a line on which this entire pattern is constant. Append its missing -letter endpoint. Applying the alternative to the induced coloring of the first block and joining the active coordinate sets produces either a monochromatic line or lines with one common focus and distinct colors. At , the focus has one of the colors, so it completes the line carrying that color. This proves the theorem.
To deduce the Van der Waerden theorem, let and color a word by the color of . On a combinatorial line with active set , these sums are
a monochromatic arithmetic progression of length .
Solved by gpt-5.6-sol high.
Restrict the coloring to the diagonal by setting . We give the direct focusing proof of a monochromatic three-term arithmetic progression. For each , induction constructs a finite interval in which either there is a monochromatic three-term progression or there are color-focused two-term progressions. The case is the pigeonhole principle. For the induction step, take sufficiently many equal blocks that two have identical color patterns. Translate the focused pairs in the first block to the second and join corresponding points. These give focused pairs at a translated focus; the pair formed by the old and translated focuses supplies the last one. If its color repeated one of the previous colors, the associated pair and the focus would already form a monochromatic three-term progression. Thus the alternative holds.
At , the common focus has one of the colors and completes the pair of that color, so there are with . Therefore
is the required monochromatic two-dimensional progression. This proves the result without invoking the Van der Waerden theorem as a black box.
Solved by gpt-5.6-sol high.
Apply the Szemerédi theorem with density and progression length five. For all sufficiently large , the set contains a nonconstant five-term arithmetic progression
where . Set
These four elements and are distinct, and direct addition gives
Solved by gpt-5.6-sol high.
Van der Waerden theorem Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-09-24
Every finite coloring of the positive integers contains monochromatic arithmetic progressions of every prescribed finite length.