Research notes on every problem, and a library of the papers behind them. Built from the open erdos repository.
Updated
Claim. There is an infinite Sidon set of positive integers that is an
asymptotic basis of order three, the theorem of
Pilatte, proved
by a different route. The result was first posted on 2026-08-25, when Boris
Alexeev's Lean repository gained the development Erdos157.lean, whose
repository page calls it a formalized proof of Problem 157; its unconditional
theorem Erdos157.erdos_157 proves an earlier form of this construction, with
coefficients in the field of elements. The write-up's version over
is the theorem Erdos157.Binary.erdos_157 of the file
Erdos157b.lean, committed on 2026-08-26. The same result was then posted
twice more: the write-up A Sidon basis of order three from polynomials over
(PDF of 2026-09-15, which prints no author) and, the same day,
an entry on the site's proof-claims page for Problem 157 by the forum user
BorisAlexeev, who writes that they asked the AI system GPT-6 Astra to solve the
problem without the hard-to-formalize literature results that Pilatte's proof
uses, and who describes the write-up as rough. The write-up keeps Pilatte's
encoding of irreducible polynomials by discrete logarithms but lets the target
residue class vary: each block carries a tag from a finite field of
characteristic seven, recorded with its square, and a shared random shift of
the discrete logarithm, so the Sidon property survives while triples gain many
independent attempts to land in a class rich in prime products. The only
distribution estimate used is an elementary zero-free region for polynomial
Dirichlet -functions over ; Sawin's estimate and the
Riemann hypothesis for curves are not used. A single Borel–Cantelli argument
over one product space gives the basis property.
Submission note. Posted to erdosproblems.com as a proof claim by GPT-6 Astra (account BorisAlexeev) on 15 September 2026, giving "GPT-6 Astra" as the AI used:
Recently I attempted to unconditionally formalize all known solutions to Erdős problems. The existing solution to this problem by Pilatte uses a result of Sawin which itself uses the solution to the Weil conjectures. While I think auto-formalization is here, and I think it is possible to auto-formalize that today (given enough time), I sought an easier path to formalization. So instead, I asked GPT-6 Astra to solve the problem in a different way, without using difficult-to-formalize results from the literature. I'm sorry for the slop writing. This is actually after a few iterations of attempted improvement.
Depends on. No page of this wiki.
Acceptance. Formalized. This corpus's verification built the module
ErdosProblems.Erdos157 of the repository at its commit of 2026-09-15, the
first formalization link above (Lean v4.33.0, Mathlib v4.33.0), and
checked the axioms of Erdos157.erdos_157, which are exactly propext,
Classical.choice and Quot.sound. The repository's comparator challenge
ComparatorChallenges/ErdosProblems/Erdos157.lean pins that theorem together
with the two definitions its type reaches, Erdos157.IsSidon and
Erdos157.IsAsymptoticBasisOfOrderThree, and the fingerprint of the built
declaration was found identical to the challenge. The statement was audited
clause by clause against the problem's Statement: it asserts an infinite set
that is Sidon in the full sense, the case
included, and a threshold beyond which every integer is with
, repeats allowed, which is the site's question answered yes.
Allowing costs nothing, since keeps all three properties and
gives the positive-integer form stated above. The theorem is proved in the
development's module Unconditional.lean, not from its conditional theorems
along Pilatte's route, each of which takes a hypothesis from Sawin's geometry.
What was built is the earlier form of the construction, over the field of
elements, in a later revision of the file first posted on 2026-08-25
(the second formalization link); it is not the write-up's version over
. Erdos157b.lean is a separate theorem and not a standalone
file: at its pinned commit its submodules import seventeen modules of
ErdosProblems/Erdos157/, and its proof calls
Erdos157.infinite_of_isAsymptoticBasisOfOrderThree. It was not built here.
Not reviewed: the proof-claims entry had no comments and the
site's curator credits the problem to Pilatte, not to this proof. Not
refereed: the write-up is an unpublished PDF. Pilatte's refereed theorem
settles the problem as well.