Skolem Meets Bateman-Horn

Fuente: arXiv
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Auteurs principaux: Luca, Florian, Maynard, James, Noubissie, Armand, Ouaknine, Joël, Worrell, James
Format: Preprint
Publié: 2023
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author Luca, Florian
Maynard, James
Noubissie, Armand
Ouaknine, Joël
Worrell, James
author_facet Luca, Florian
Maynard, James
Noubissie, Armand
Ouaknine, Joël
Worrell, James
contents The Skolem Problem asks to determine whether a given integer linear recurrence sequence has a zero term. This problem arises across a wide range of topics in computer science, including loop termination, formal languages, automata theory, and control theory, amongst many others. Decidability of the Skolem Problem is notoriously open. The state of the art is a decision procedure for recurrences of order at most 4: an advance achieved some 40 years ago, based on Baker's theorem on linear forms in logarithms of algebraic numbers. A new approach to the Skolem Problem was recently initiated via the notion of a Universal Skolem Set: a set $S$ of positive integers such that it is decidable whether a given non-degenerate linear recurrence sequence has a zero in $S$. Clearly, proving decidability of the Skolem Problem is equivalent to showing that $\mathbb{N}$ itself is a Universal Skolem Set. The main contribution of the present paper is to construct a Universal Skolem Set that has lower density at least $0.29$. We show moreover that this set has density one subject to the Bateman-Horn conjecture. The latter is a central unifying hypothesis concerning the frequency of prime numbers among the values of systems of polynomials.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2308_01152
institution arXiv
publishDate 2023
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Skolem Meets Bateman-Horn
Luca, Florian
Maynard, James
Noubissie, Armand
Ouaknine, Joël
Worrell, James
Discrete Mathematics
Number Theory
F.3.0; G.2.0; I.1.2
The Skolem Problem asks to determine whether a given integer linear recurrence sequence has a zero term. This problem arises across a wide range of topics in computer science, including loop termination, formal languages, automata theory, and control theory, amongst many others. Decidability of the Skolem Problem is notoriously open. The state of the art is a decision procedure for recurrences of order at most 4: an advance achieved some 40 years ago, based on Baker's theorem on linear forms in logarithms of algebraic numbers. A new approach to the Skolem Problem was recently initiated via the notion of a Universal Skolem Set: a set $S$ of positive integers such that it is decidable whether a given non-degenerate linear recurrence sequence has a zero in $S$. Clearly, proving decidability of the Skolem Problem is equivalent to showing that $\mathbb{N}$ itself is a Universal Skolem Set. The main contribution of the present paper is to construct a Universal Skolem Set that has lower density at least $0.29$. We show moreover that this set has density one subject to the Bateman-Horn conjecture. The latter is a central unifying hypothesis concerning the frequency of prime numbers among the values of systems of polynomials.
title Skolem Meets Bateman-Horn
topic Discrete Mathematics
Number Theory
F.3.0; G.2.0; I.1.2
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2308.01152