Research notes on every problem, and a library of the papers behind them. Built from the open erdos repository.
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Claim. Vitaly Bergelson and David Simmons, New examples of complete sets, with connections to a Diophantine theorem of Furstenberg, Acta Arith. 177 (2017), no. 2, 101--131; arXiv:1507.02208 (v1 of 8 July 2015, v2 of 24 September 2016). A set of positive integers is complete when every sufficiently large integer is a sum of distinct elements of it, and strongly complete when it stays complete after any finite subset is removed. Theorem 1.23 (Theorem 1.22 in the first arXiv version): let be finite, pairwise disjoint subsets of with and for . Then the set of all powers , with and , is strongly complete. The argument was not reconstructed in this corpus.
Covers. The second question of Problem 124, for every , at every tuple that contains four such disjoint subsets: yes. The powers with exponent below form a finite set, so strong completeness makes every sufficiently large integer a sum of distinct powers with and in the union, and such a sum is with , one term per base. Not covered: tuples without such subsets, in particular every tuple whose reciprocal sum is at most , and the first question, which the theorem also answers at these tuples but which is claimed in full on Alexeev's page.
Depends on. No page of this wiki.
Acceptance. Refereed: Acta Arithmetica 177 (2017), no. 2, 101--131. The
site's commentary (page last edited 1 December 2025) does not mention the paper
and labels the problem OPEN, so no reviewed evidence is listed; a post on the
site's thread of 23 September 2026 cites the theorem, with Fan's
(claim page), as
settling the second question when the reciprocal sum is large enough.