The sharp threshold for making squares

Abstract

Consider a random sequence of $N$ integers, each chosen uniformly and independently from the set $\{1,\dots,x\}$. Motivated by applications to factorization algorithms such as Dixon’s algorithm, the quadratic sieve, and the number field sieve, Pomerance in 1994 posed the following problem: how large should $N$ be so that, with high probability, this sequence contains a subsequence, the product of whose elements is a perfect square? Pomerance determined asymptotically the logarithm of the threshold for this event, and conjectured that it in fact exhibits a sharp threshold in $N$. More recently, Croot, Granville, Pemantle and Tetali determined the threshold up to a factor of $4/\pi + o(1)$ as $x \to \infty$, and made a conjecture regarding the location of the sharp threshold.

In this paper we prove both of these conjectures, by determining the sharp threshold for making squares. Our proof combines techniques from combinatorics, probability and analytic number theory; in particular, we use the so-called method of self-correcting martingales in order to control the size of the 2-core of the random hypergraph that encodes the prime factors of our random numbers. Our method also gives a new (and completely different) proof of the upper bound in the main theorem of Croot, Granville, Pemantle and Tetali.

Authors

Paul Balister

Department of Mathematical Sciences, University of Memphis, Memphis, TN 38152, USA

Béla Bollobás

Department of Pure Mathematics and Mathematical Statistics, Wilberforce Road, Cambridge, CB3 0WA, United Kingdom, and Department of Mathematical Sciences, University of Memphis, Memphis, TN 38152, USA, and London Institute for Mathematical Sciences, 35A South Street, London, W1K 2XF, United Kingdom

Robert Morris

IMPA, Estrada Dona Castorina, 110, Jardim Botânico, Rio de Janeiro, 22460-320, Brazil