Upper and lower estimates for integer complexity
Upper and lower estimates for integer complexity
S. Konyagin,K. Oganesyan
Abstract
Let ∥n∥ stand for the integer complexity of the number n, i.e. for the least number of 1's needed to write n using arbitrary many additions, multiplications, and parentheses. The two-sided inequality 3log3n≤∥n∥≤3log2n for all n is well known and reveals the logarithmic behaviour of the complexity function ∥n∥. While the lower bound 3log3n is attained infinitely many times at powers of 3, the best upper estimate is still unknown, although there are some improvements of the trivial bound 3log2n. Besides, for @@LINECODEBLOCK0@@typical" numbers, i.e. for almost all numbers n, the better inequality ∥n∥≤Cavglogn holds, where, importantly, Cavg≈3.295<supnlogn∥n∥. We show that in fact ∥n∥≤Cavglogn+o(logn) as n→∞, which, in particular, yields that n→∞limsuplogn∥n∥≤Cavg. We also obtain the first nontrivial lower bound ∥n∥≥3.06log3n for almost all numbers n.
