Journal of Integer Sequences, Vol. 15 (2012), Article 12.6.1

On Lower Order Extremal Integral Sets Avoiding Prime Pairwise Sums


Ram Krishna Pandey
Department of Mathematics
Indian Institute of Technology, Patna
Patliputra Colony, Patna - 800013
India

Abstract:

Let A be a subset of {1,2, ..., n} such that the sum of no two distinct elements of A is a prime number. Such a subset is called a prime-sumset-free subset of {1,2, ..., n}. A prime-sumset-free subset is called an extremal prime-sumset-free subset of {1,2, ..., n} if A ∪ {a} is not a prime-sumset-free subset for any a ∈ {1,2, ..., n} \ A. We prove that if n ≥ 10 then there is no any extremal prime-sumset-free subset of {1,2, ..., n} of order 2 and if n ≥ 13 then there is no any extremal prime-sumset-free subset of {1,2, ..., n} of order 3. Moreover, we prove that for each integer k ≥ 2, there exists a nk such that if nnk then there does not exist any extremal prime-sumset-free subset of {1,2, ..., n} of length k. Furthermore, for some small values of n, we give the orders of all extremal prime-sumset-free subset of {1,2, ..., n}, along with an example of each order and we give all extremal prime-sumset-free subsets of {1,2, ..., n} of orders 2 and 3 for n ≤ 13.


Full version:  pdf,    dvi,    ps,    latex    


Received March 16 2012; revised version received June 1 2012. Published in Journal of Integer Sequences, June 12 2012.


Return to Journal of Integer Sequences home page