Aigner's ordering conjectures for Markov numbers

From papers

For coprime positive integers p,qp,q with 1p<q1\leq p<q, let mp/qm_{p/q} denote the Markov number indexed by the rational number p/q[0,1]p/q\in[0,1].

Aigner's conjectures. The following ordering properties should hold:

  1. Fixed Numerator: If q<qq<q' and gcd(p,q)=1\gcd(p,q')=1, then
mp/q<mp/q.m_{p/q}<m_{p/q'}.
  1. Fixed Denominator: If p<p<qp<p'<q and gcd(p,q)=1\gcd(p',q)=1, then
mp/q<mp/q.m_{p/q}<m_{p'/q}.
  1. Fixed Sum: If 0<i<p0<i<p and gcd(pi,q+i)=1\gcd(p-i,q+i)=1, then
mp/q<m(pi)/(q+i).m_{p/q}<m_{(p-i)/(q+i)}.

These conjectures concern the total ordering of Markov numbers induced by their rational indexing. The paper states that the corresponding conjectures for kk-Markov numbers are established, while the ordinary Markov-number formulation is attributed to Aigner and is described as weaker than Frobenius' unicity conjecture.

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Sources & referencesView supporting material

Primary source

Esther Banaian, “Orderings of k-Markov Numbers”, arXiv:2512.04026 (2026).

Additional references

2 papers in this index state this conjecture (2020–2025). The statement above is taken from the most recent of them; the others are arXiv:2010.13010.

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