Rainbow arithmetic progressions

TL;DR

This paper studies the minimum number of colors needed to ensure rainbow arithmetic progressions in colored sets of integers and cyclic groups, revealing logarithmic bounds for length 3 and polynomial bounds for longer progressions.

Contribution

It establishes new bounds for rainbow arithmetic progressions in both integer sets and cyclic groups, including the behavior depending on divisibility and prime factorization.

Findings

aw([n],3)=Θ(log n)

aw([n],k)=n^{1-o(1)} for k≥4

aw(Z_n,3) depends on divisibility and prime factors

Abstract

In this paper, we investigate the anti-Ramsey (more precisely, anti-van der Waerden) properties of arithmetic progressions. For positive integers $n$ and $k$, the expression $aw([n],k)$ denotes the smallest number of colors with which the integers $\{1,\ldots,n\}$ can be colored and still guarantee there is a rainbow arithmetic progression of length $k$. We establish that $aw([n],3)=\Theta(\log n)$ and $aw([n],k)=n^{1-o(1)}$ for $k\geq 4$. For positive integers $n$ and $k$, the expression $aw(Z_n,k)$ denotes the smallest number of colors with which elements of the cyclic group of order $n$ can be colored and still guarantee there is a rainbow arithmetic progression of length $k$. In this setting, arithmetic progressions can "wrap around," and $aw(Z_n,3)$ behaves quite differently from $aw([n],3)$, depending on the divisibility of $n$. As shown in [Jungi\'c et al., \textit{Combin. Probab. Comput.}, 2003], $aw(Z_{2^m},3) = 3$ for any positive integer $m$. We establish that $aw(Z_n,3)$ can be computed from knowledge of $aw(Z_p,3)$ for all of the prime factors $p$ of $n$. However, for $k\geq 4$, the behavior is similar to the previous case, that is, $aw(Z_n,k)=n^{1-o(1)}$.