First-occurrence positions for Fibonacci-number differences

Prove that for the Fibonacci word, the first starting positions of maximum-length monochromatic arithmetic progressions satisfy i(F_{2n+1})=F_{2n+3}−2 and i(F_{2n})=F_{4n}−1.

Background

For each difference d, the function i(d) records the earliest position at which a maximum-length monochromatic arithmetic progression of difference d begins. The paper derives several exact formulas for families such as d=F_n−1, F_n+1, and F_n+2.

For the important remaining family d=F_n, the authors observe empirical evidence for a simple parity-dependent formula. Because A(F_n) is not eventually constant, their automatic-theorem-proving approach cannot directly verify the claim, leaving the conjecture unresolved.

References

Empirical evidence generated by suggests making the following Conjecture \ref{CONJ:idfn}. Unfortunately, because A(F_n) is not eventually constant, as will be shown in the next section, we once again run into the limitation of 's inability to handle the multiplication of two variables.

Monochromatic arithmetic progressions in the Fibonacci, Thue-Morse, and Rudin-Shapiro words  (2501.05830 - Joshi et al., 10 Jan 2025) in Conjecture 3, subsection “Investigating MAPs in the Fibonacci word in Walnut”