Research notes on every problem, and a library of the papers behind them. Built from the open erdos repository.
Updated
Claim. The preprint Quasipolynomial bounds for arithmetic progressions of the OpenAI mathematics release (dated 23 September 2026, authored by OpenAI) states as its Theorem 1.1 that for each fixed integer there are constants such that for every
where is the largest size of a subset of with no -term progression of positive common difference; equivalently, a subset of of density contains such a progression once exceeds a fixed power of . The manuscript's intake card is openai_2026_quasipolynomial_bounds_arithmetic_progressions. The manuscript's target is Erdős's reciprocal-sum conjecture, Problem 3, which its Corollary 1.2 derives by summing the bound over dyadic intervals; it also derives a divergence criterion with logarithmic weights and recovers the Green–Tao theorem on the primes. For Problem 139 the bound gives directly, since the exponential factor tends to zero, with the cases trivial. The problem is already proved by Szemerédi (claim page); this is a second route whose bound is stronger than those the problem page records for every (the manuscript claims no improvement of the three-term exponent, where Kelley and Meka's bound has the same shape), by a density-increment argument over polynomial cells whose logarithmic losses the manuscript keeps polynomial in .
Depends on. Nothing in this wiki; the theorem is the manuscript's own.
Formalization. The release's Lean tree at the pinned revision defines, in
OAI/Combinatorics/Progressions/Model.lean, OAI.Erdos3.extremalNumber k N
as the largest size of a subset of free of -term
progressions with positive difference, which is exactly , and
QuantitativeDensityBound k as the existence of with
QuantitativeDensityTheorem asserts this for every , and
OAI/Combinatorics/Progressions/Results/Conclusions.lean proves it as
OAI.Erdos3.manuscriptQuantitativeDensityTheorem, the first component of
manuscript_main_theorems. The formalized saving, a power of
above one, is weaker than the manuscript's power of
, but it still gives for every . The
second component, manuscriptReciprocalProgressionTheorem, is the
statement pinned by the comparator challenge
ComparatorChallenges/ErdosReciprocal.lean, whose record permits only
propext, Quot.sound and Classical.choice; the release's own
description of the family says the quantitative bound lies outside the
pinned statement, and no comparator challenge pins the quantitative
declaration. Toolchain leanprover/lean4:v4.34.1.
Acceptance. Formalized. This corpus's verification built
OAI.Erdos3.manuscriptQuantitativeDensityTheorem at the pinned revision with
the toolchain leanprover/lean4:v4.34.1 and checked its axioms, which are
exactly propext, Classical.choice and Quot.sound. No comparator challenge
pins the declaration, so it has no fingerprint to match; its statement and the
definitions it uses were audited against the problem instead.
extremalNumber k N is exactly , since HasAP asks for a positive
common difference; the hypothesis keeps positive, so the
real power takes no junk value; and the exponential factor tends to zero, so the
bound gives for every , while for the claim is
trivial because . The pinned
manuscriptReciprocalProgressionTheorem is not this page's route: it implies
only through the classical argument that Erdős's reciprocal-sum
conjecture implies Szemerédi's theorem, which is not formalized. The acceptance
is of the Lean statement so audited, a second route to a problem already proved
by Szemerédi. Not reviewed and not refereed: the manuscript is a release
preprint with no journal record and no outside review recorded, so its
Theorem 1.1, whose saving is stronger than the formalized one, stays unreviewed;
the release's README says its manuscripts were produced by an internal OpenAI
model and that its results are at different stages of verification. On
2026-09-04 the site's page for Problem 139 showed PROVED (LEAN) with no mention
of the release.