Rainbow arithmetic progressions

Steve Butler, Craig Erickson, Leslie Hogben, Kirsten Hogenson, Lucas Kramer, Richard L. Kramer, Jephian Chin-Hung Lin, Ryan R. Martin, Derrick Stolee, Nathan Warnberg, Michael Young

Published 2014-04-29, updated 2016-01-11Version 2

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, $aw(Z_n,k)=n^{1-o(1)}$.