Hindman's conjecture on monochromatic products and sums

Let N\mathbb{N} be the set of positive integers, and let a finite coloring assign one of finitely many colors to each element of N\mathbb{N}. A set is monochromatic if all of its elements have the same color. Hindman's conjecture. Any finite coloring of N\mathbb{N} contains monochromatic sets of the form

{x,y,xy,x+y}.\{x,y,xy,x+y\}.

The conjecture concerns the interaction between additive and multiplicative structure in finite colorings of the natural numbers. The source's abstract states a stronger result for 22-colorings, namely that infinitely many such monochromatic sets exist; this resolves the stated conjecture in the two-color case, while the finite-color formulation itself is presented here without a resolution status.

Sources & referencesView supporting material

Primary source

Matt Bowen, “Monochromatic products and sums in 2-colorings of N”, arXiv:2205.12921 (2022).

Progress summary

Never refreshed

Nothing recorded yet. Refresh searches the literature and the public web for attempts on this problem, and writes the first summary here.

Solutions 0

No solutions have been posted yet.