Upper and lower densities have the strong Darboux property

Abstract

Let $\mathcal{P}({\bf N})$ be the power set of $\bf N$. An upper density (on $\bf N$) is a non\-decreasing and subadditive function $\mu^\ast: \mathcal{P}({\bf N})\to\bf R$ such that $\mu^\ast({\bf N}) = 1$ and $\mu^\ast(k \cdot X + h) = \frac{1}{k} \mu^\ast(X)$ for all $X \subseteq \bf N$ and $h,k \in {\bf N}^+$, where $k \cdot X + h := \{kx + h: x \in X\}$. The upper asymptotic, upper Banach, upper logarithmic, upper Buck, upper P\'olya, and upper analytic densities are examples of upper densities. We show that every upper density $\mu^\ast$ has the strong Darboux property, and so does the associated lower density, where a function $f: \mathcal P({\bf N}) \to \bf R$ is said to have the strong Darboux property if, whenever $X \subseteq Y \subseteq \bf N$ and $a \in [f(X),f(Y)]$, there is a set $A$ such that $X\subseteq A\subseteq Y$ and $f(A)=a$. In fact, we prove the above under the assumption that the monotonicity of $\mu^\ast$ is relaxed to the weaker condition that $\mu^\ast(X) \le 1$ for every $X \subseteq \bf N$.Comment: 10 pages, no figures. Fixed minor details and streamlined the exposition. To appear in Journal of Number Theor