Integer Dynamics

TL;DR

This paper studies the dynamics of a polynomial-based digit sum map in different bases, revealing that bases with cycles of a fixed length form an arithmetic progression and discussing conjectures about the finiteness of bases with specific cycle counts.

Contribution

It proves that bases with cycles of a given length always form an arithmetic progression and suggests that the set of bases with exactly two cycles may be infinite, challenging previous conjectures.

Findings

Bases with cycles of fixed length form an arithmetic progression.

The set of bases with exactly two cycles may be infinite.

The results relate to a 1978 conjecture on cycle counts.

Abstract

Let $b \geq 2$ be an integer, and write the base $b$ expansion of any non-negative integer $n$ as $n=x_0+x_1b+\dots+ x_{d}b^{d}$, with $x_d>0$ and $ 0 \leq x_i < b$ for $i=0,\dots,d$. Let $\phi(x)$ denote an integer polynomial such that $\phi(n) >0$ for all $n>0$. Consider the map $S_{\phi,b}: {\mathbb Z}_{\geq 0} \to {\mathbb Z}_{\geq 0}$, with $ S_{\phi,b}(n) := \phi(x_0)+ \dots + \phi(x_d)$. It is known that the orbit set $\{n,S_{\phi,b}(n), S_{\phi,b}(S_{\phi,b}(n)), \dots \}$ is finite for all $n>0$. Each orbit contains a finite cycle, and for a given $b$, the union of such cycles over all orbit sets is finite. Fix now an integer $\ell\geq 1$ and let $\phi(x)=x^2$. We show that the set of bases $b\geq 2$ which have at least one cycle of length $\ell$ always contains an arithmetic progression and thus has positive lower density. We also show that a 1978 conjecture of Hasse and Prichett on the set of bases with exactly two cycles needs to be modified, raising the possibility that this set might not be finite.