A lower bound for Cusick’s conjecture on the digits of n + t
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Abstract
Let s be the sum-of-digits function in base 2, which returns the number of 1s in the base-2 expansion of a nonnegative integer. For a nonnegative integer t, define ct as the asymptotic density of nonnegative integers n such that s(n+t)≥s(n). T. W. Cusick conjectured that ct>1/2. We have the elementary bound 0<ct<1; however, no bound of the form 0<α≤ct or ct≤β <1, valid for all t, is known. In this paper, we prove that ct>1/2−ε as soon as t contains sufficiently many blocks of 1s in its binary expansion. In the proof, we provide estimates for the moments of an associated probability distribution; this extends the study initiated by Emme and Prikhod’ko (2017) and pursued by Emme and Hubert (2018).
Details
Original language | English |
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Number of pages | 23 |
Journal | Mathematical proceedings of the Cambridge Philosophical Society |
Volume | 2021 |
Publication status | Published - 2021 |