Upper and lower densities have the strong Darboux property

TL;DR

This paper proves that all upper densities on natural numbers, including various classical examples, possess the strong Darboux property, ensuring intermediate values can be achieved within set inclusions.

Contribution

It establishes that every upper density, and its associated lower density, has the strong Darboux property, even under relaxed monotonicity conditions.

Findings

Upper densities have the strong Darboux property.

Associated lower densities also possess the strong Darboux property.

The result holds under weaker conditions than monotonicity.

Abstract

Let $\mathcal{P}({\bf N})$ be the power set of $\bf N$. An upper density (on $\bf N$) is a non\-decreasing and subadditive function $\mu^\ast: \mathcal{P}({\bf N})\to\bf R$ such that $\mu^\ast({\bf N}) = 1$ and $\mu^\ast(k \cdot X + h) = \frac{1}{k} \mu^\ast(X)$ for all $X \subseteq \bf N$ and $h,k \in {\bf N}^+$, where $k \cdot X + h := \{kx + h: x \in X\}$. The upper asymptotic, upper Banach, upper logarithmic, upper Buck, upper P\'olya, and upper analytic densities are examples of upper densities. We show that every upper density $\mu^\ast$ has the strong Darboux property, and so does the associated lower density, where a function $f: \mathcal P({\bf N}) \to \bf R$ is said to have the strong Darboux property if, whenever $X \subseteq Y \subseteq \bf N$ and $a \in [f(X),f(Y)]$, there is a set $A$ such that $X\subseteq A\subseteq Y$ and $f(A)=a$. In fact, we prove the above under the assumption that the monotonicity of $\mu^\ast$ is relaxed to the weaker condition that $\mu^\ast(X) \le 1$ for every $X \subseteq \bf N$.