On a Diophantine equation of Erdős and Graham

Abstract

We study solvability of the Diophantine equation \begin{equation*} \frac{n}{2^{n}}=\sum_{i=1}^{k}\frac{a_{i}}{2^{a_{i}}}, \end{equation*} in integers $n, k, a_{1},\ldots, a_{k}$ satisfying the conditions $k\geq 2$ and $a_{i}<a_{i+1}$ for $i=1,\ldots,k-1$. The above Diophantine equation (of polynomial-exponential type) was mentioned in the monograph of Erdős and Graham, where several questions were stated. Some of these questions were already answered by Borwein and Loring. We extend their work and investigate other aspects of Erdős and Graham equation. First of all, we obtain the upper bound for the value $a_{k}$ given in terms of $k$ only. This mean, that with fixed $k$ our equation has only finitely many solutions in $n, a_{1},\ldots, a_{k}$. Moreover, we construct an infinite set $\cal{K}$, such that for each $k\in\cal{K}$, the considered equation has at least five solutions. As an application of our findings we enumerate all solutions of the equation for $k\leq 8$. Moreover, by applying greedy algorithm, we extend Borwein and Loring calculations and check that for each $n\leq 10^4$ there is a value of $k$ such that the considered equation has a solution in integers $n+1=a_{1}<a_{2}<\ldots <a_{k}$. Based on our numerical calculations we formulate some further questions and conjectures.