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arXiv · 1711.08076

Schur Number Five

Marijn J. H. Heule
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Abstract

We present the solution of a century-old problem known as Schur Number Five: What is the largest (natural) number $n$ such that there exists a five-coloring of the positive numbers up to $n$ without a monochromatic solution of the equation $a + b = c$? We obtained the solution, $n = 160$, by encoding the problem into propositional logic and applying massively parallel satisfiability solving techniques on the resulting formula. We constructed and validated a proof of the solution to increase trust in the correctness of the multi-CPU-year computations. The proof is two petabytes in size and was certified using a formally verified proof checker, demonstrating that any result by satisfiability solvers---no matter how large---can now be validated using highly trustworthy systems.

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Marijn J. H. Heule. 2017-11-21. Schur Number Five. https://arxiv.org/abs/1711.08076

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