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    The continuous postage stamp problem

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    For a real set AA consider the semigroup S(A)S(A), additively generated by AA; that is, the set of all real numbers representable as a (finite) sum of elements of AA. If AβŠ‚(0,1)A \subset (0,1) is open and non-empty, then S(A)S(A) is easily seen to contain all sufficiently large real numbers, and we let G(A):=sup⁑{u∈R ⁣:uβˆ‰S(A)}G(A) := \sup \{u \in R \colon u \notin S(A) \}. Thus, G(A)G(A) is the smallest number with the property that any u>G(A)u>G(A) is representable as indicated above. We show that if the measure of AA is large, then G(A)G(A) is small; more precisely, writing for brevity \alpha := \mes A we have G(A) \le (1-\alpha) \lfloor 1/\alpha \rfloor \quad &\text{if $0 < \alpha \le 0.1$}, (1-\alpha+\alpha\{1/\alpha\})\lfloor 1/\alpha\rfloor \quad &\text{if $0.1 \le \alpha \le 0.5$}, 2(1-\alpha) \quad &\text{if $0.5 \le \alpha \le 1$}. Indeed, the first and the last of these three estimates are the best possible, attained for A=(1βˆ’Ξ±,1)A=(1-\alpha,1) and A=(1βˆ’Ξ±,1)βˆ–{2(1βˆ’Ξ±)}A=(1-\alpha,1)\setminus\{2(1-\alpha)\}, respectively; the second is close to the best possible and can be improved by Ξ±{1/Ξ±}⌊1/Ξ±βŒ‹β‰€{1/Ξ±}\alpha \{1/\alpha\} \lfloor 1/\alpha \rfloor \le \{1/\alpha\} at most. The problem studied is a continuous analogue of the linear Diophantine problem of Frobenius (in its extremal settings due to Erdos and Graham), also known as the "postage stamp problem" or the "coin exchange problem"
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