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Erdős-Turán Additive Basis Conjecture


The Erdős-Turán additive basis conjecture asserts that if a set A of nonnegative integers represents every sufficiently large integer as a sum of two members of A, then the number of such representations is unbounded (Erdős and Turán 1941). With ordered representations and repetition allowed, put

 r_A(n)=|{(a,b) in A×A:a+b=n}|.

The hypothesis is r_A(n)>=1 for all sufficiently large n, and the conclusion is limsup_(n->infty)r_A(n)=infty. The conjecture does not assert that r_A(n) tends to infinity.

The problem remains open (Borwein et al. 2006, Bloom 2026). It concerns additive representations and is distinct from the Erdős-Turán conjecture about arithmetic progressions.

This is problem 28 in the Erdős problems collection (Bloom 2026).


See also

Erdős Problems

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References

Bloom, T. F. "Erdős Problem 28." Accessed Oct. 26, 2026. https://www.erdosproblems.com/28.Borwein, P.; Choi, S.; and Chu, F. "An Old Conjecture of Erdős-Turán on Additive Bases." Math. Comput. 75, 475-484, 2006. https://doi.org/10.1090/S0025-5718-05-01777-1.Erdős, P. and Turán, P. "On a Problem of Sidon in Additive Number Theory, and on Some Related Problems." J. London Math. Soc. 16, 212-215, 1941. https://doi.org/10.1112/jlms/s1-16.4.212.

Cite this as:

Weisstein, Eric W. "Erdős-Turán Additive Basis Conjecture." From MathWorld--A Wolfram Resource. https://mathworld.wolfram.com/Erdos-TuranAdditiveBasisConjecture.html

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