Research notes on every problem, and a library of the papers behind them. Built from the open erdos repository.
Updated
Boris Alexeev and Dustin G. Mixon, Forbidden Sidon subsets of perfect difference sets, featuring a human-assisted proof, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 123 (2026), no. 21, e2531760123; arXiv:2510.19804 (version 1 of 2025-10-22, version 2 of 2026-01-16); library card. Theorem 8: the Sidon set extends to no perfect difference set modulo for any prime . Theorem 9: the Sidon set extends to no perfect difference set modulo any . Both sets are initial segments of the greedy (Mian–Chowla) Sidon sequence. Theorem 8 alone answers Problem 707 as stated, with modulus for a prime , in the negative; Theorem 9 refutes the form with an arbitrary modulus as well. Section 3 gives a short direct proof of Theorem 8; Sections 4 and 5 prove both theorems along Hall's 1947 argument, through the projective plane of a perfect difference set and the polarity , and show on the way that Hall's set (claim page) was a counterexample three decades before Erdős posed the question.
The Lean file Erdos707.lean, an ancillary file of the arXiv record (Lean
4.24.0, Mathlib v4.24.0), defines erdos_707_prime (the problem as stated),
erdos_707 (any modulus) and erdos_707_integer (integer sets), and proves
not_erdos_707P : ¬ erdos_707_prime from and
not_erdos_707AM : ¬ erdos_707 from , closing with a printed
axiom line of propext, Classical.choice and Quot.sound. The authors write
that the proof code was generated by ChatGPT and that they checked the formal
statements themselves; they chose the formal route because Hall's remark had
gone unnoticed for so long. Alexeev re-posted the version-1 ancillary file,
which lacks version 2's toolchain header and closing axiom line, in Alexeev's
repository of formalized Erdős problems on 2025-11-27 (the second
formalization link, pinned). Section 8 asks for the smallest size of a
Sidon set that extends to no perfect difference set and shows only
. The site's problem page records a MathOverflow argument of
Sawin that every Sidon set of size extends; its remarks (last edited
2025-10-26) record size as open.
Acceptance. The site's curator, T. F. Bloom, records the disproof on the
problem page (last edited 2025-10-26) under the label DISPROVED (LEAN), which
is the reviewed evidence named here. The paper is refereed: Proc. Natl.
Acad. Sci. USA 123 (2026), no. 21, e2531760123. This corpus has not built
the Lean file or audited its statements, so formalized is not listed.
Depends on. Nothing beyond the cited paper.