Arithmetic Algorithms for Hereditarily Binary Natural Numbers

Abstract: We study some essential arithmetic properties of a new tree-based number representation, {\em hereditarily binary numbers}, defined by applying recursively run-length encoding of bijective base-2 digits. Our representation expresses giant numbers like the largest known prime number and its related perfect number as well as the largest known Woodall, Cullen, Proth, Sophie Germain and twin primes as trees of small sizes. More importantly, our number representation supports novel algorithms that, in the best case, collapse the complexity of various computations by super-exponential factors and in the worse case are within a constant factor of their traditional counterparts. As a result, it opens the door to a new world, where arithmetic operations are limited by the structural complexity of their operands, rather than their bitsizes.