Research notes on every problem, and a library of the papers behind them. Built from the open erdos repository.
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Statement. There is a Sidon set meeting every progression , where and . Consequently contains no infinite arithmetic progression.
Source. The problem page gives this construction and regards it as implicit in Baumgartner's 1975 work. See the source record for the unresolved historical attribution.
Proof. The pairs are countable, so enumerate their progressions as . Choose a positive . Once is chosen, the unbounded progression contains an integer ; choose its least such element. The set is Sidon by the doubling-gap lemma. It meets at for every , so no enumerated progression lies in its complement. These are all infinite progressions in . The same argument applies to positive integers.
Method. Enumeration makes countably many hitting requirements compatible with successively larger gaps. This proves the integer statement; it does not enumerate all progressions in or prove Problem 199's corresponding real-set assertion.
Bears on. Problem 198: the set constructed is a Sidon set whose complement contains no infinite arithmetic progression, a negative answer.