On addition chains and progress on the Scholz conjecture (2108.07720v11)

Abstract: In this paper, we develop some new classes of methods to study the Scholz conjecture on addition chains. It turns out that the exponents of numbers of the form $2^n-1$ largely determine the length of the shortest addition chain for number producing $2^n-1$. Exploiting the notion of carries, we obtain improved upper bounds for the length of the shortest addition chains $\iota(2^n-1)$ producing $2^n-1$. Most notably, we show that if $2^n-1$ has carries of degree at most $$\kappa(2^n-1)=\frac{1}{2}(\iota(n)-\lfloor \frac{\log n}{\log 2}\rfloor+\sum \limits_{j=1}^{\lfloor \frac{\log n}{\log 2}\rfloor}{\frac{n}{2^j}})$$ then the inequality $$\iota(2^n-1)\leq n+1+\sum \limits_{j=1}^{\lfloor \frac{\log n}{\log 2}\rfloor}\bigg({\frac{n}{2^j}}-\xi(n,j)\bigg)+\iota(n)$$ holds for all $n\in \mathbb{N}$ with $n\geq 4$, where $\iota(\cdot)$ denotes the length of the shortest addition chain producing $\cdot$, ${\cdot}$ denotes the fractional part of $\cdot$ and where $\xi(n,1):={\frac{n}{2}}$ with $\xi(n,2)={\frac{1}{2}\lfloor \frac{n}{2}\rfloor}$ and so on.