Becker’s conjecture on Mahler functions
Bibliographic record
Abstract
In 1994, Becker conjectured that if <inline-formula content-type="math/mathml"> <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" alttext="upper F left-parenthesis z right-parenthesis"> <mml:semantics> <mml:mrow> <mml:mi>F</mml:mi> <mml:mo stretchy="false">(</mml:mo> <mml:mi>z</mml:mi> <mml:mo stretchy="false">)</mml:mo> </mml:mrow> <mml:annotation encoding="application/x-tex">F(z)</mml:annotation> </mml:semantics> </mml:math> </inline-formula> is a <inline-formula content-type="math/mathml"> <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" alttext="k"> <mml:semantics> <mml:mi>k</mml:mi> <mml:annotation encoding="application/x-tex">k</mml:annotation> </mml:semantics> </mml:math> </inline-formula> -regular power series, then there exists a <inline-formula content-type="math/mathml"> <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" alttext="k"> <mml:semantics> <mml:mi>k</mml:mi> <mml:annotation encoding="application/x-tex">k</mml:annotation> </mml:semantics> </mml:math> </inline-formula> -regular rational function <inline-formula content-type="math/mathml"> <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" alttext="upper R left-parenthesis z right-parenthesis"> <mml:semantics> <mml:mrow> <mml:mi>R</mml:mi> <mml:mo stretchy="false">(</mml:mo> <mml:mi>z</mml:mi> <mml:mo stretchy="false">)</mml:mo> </mml:mrow> <mml:annotation encoding="application/x-tex">R(z)</mml:annotation> </mml:semantics> </mml:math> </inline-formula> such that <inline-formula content-type="math/mathml"> <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" alttext="upper F left-parenthesis z right-parenthesis slash upper R left-parenthesis z right-parenthesis"> <mml:semantics> <mml:mrow> <mml:mi>F</mml:mi> <mml:mo stretchy="false">(</mml:mo> <mml:mi>z</mml:mi> <mml:mo stretchy="false">)</mml:mo> <mml:mrow class="MJX-TeXAtom-ORD"> <mml:mo>/</mml:mo> </mml:mrow> <mml:mi>R</mml:mi> <mml:mo stretchy="false">(</mml:mo> <mml:mi>z</mml:mi> <mml:mo stretchy="false">)</mml:mo> </mml:mrow> <mml:annotation encoding="application/x-tex">F(z)/R(z)</mml:annotation> </mml:semantics> </mml:math> </inline-formula> satisfies a Mahler-type functional equation with polynomial coefficients where the initial coefficient satisfies <inline-formula content-type="math/mathml"> <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" alttext="a 0 left-parenthesis z right-parenthesis equals 1"> <mml:semantics> <mml:mrow> <mml:msub> <mml:mi>a</mml:mi> <mml:mn>0</mml:mn> </mml:msub> <mml:mo stretchy="false">(</mml:mo> <mml:mi>z</mml:mi> <mml:mo stretchy="false">)</mml:mo> <mml:mo>=</mml:mo> <mml:mn>1</mml:mn> </mml:mrow> <mml:annotation encoding="application/x-tex">a_0(z)=1</mml:annotation> </mml:semantics> </mml:math> </inline-formula> . In this paper, we prove Becker’s conjecture in the best-possible form; we show that the rational function <inline-formula content-type="math/mathml"> <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" alttext="upper R left-parenthesis z right-parenthesis"> <mml:semantics> <mml:mrow> <mml:mi>R</mml:mi> <mml:mo stretchy="false">(</mml:mo> <mml:mi>z</mml:mi> <mml:mo stretchy="false">)</mml:mo> </mml:mrow> <mml:annotation encoding="application/x-tex">R(z)</mml:annotation> </mml:semantics> </mml:math> </inline-formula> can be taken to be a polynomial <inline-formula content-type="math/mathml"> <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" alttext="z Superscript gamma Baseline upper Q left-parenthesis z right-parenthesis"> <mml:semantics> <mml:mrow> <mml:msup> <mml:mi>z</mml:mi> <mml:mi> γ </mml:mi> </mml:msup> <mml:mi>Q</mml:mi> <mml:mo stretchy="false">(</mml:mo> <mml:mi>z</mml:mi> <mml:mo stretchy="false">)</mml:mo> </mml:mrow> <mml:annotation encoding="application/x-tex">z^\gamma Q(z)</mml:annotation> </mml:semantics> </mml:math> </inline-formula> for some explicit nonnegative integer <inline-formula content-type="math/mathml"> <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" alttext="gamma"> <mml:semantics> <mml:mi> γ </mml:mi> <mml:annotation encoding="application/x-tex">\gamma</mml:annotation> </mml:semantics> </mml:math> </inline-formula> and such that <inline-formula content-type="math/mathml"> <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" alttext="1 slash upper Q left-parenthesis z right-parenthesis"> <mml:semantics> <mml:mrow> <mml:mn>1</mml:mn> <mml:mrow class="MJX-TeXAtom-ORD"> <mml:mo>/</mml:mo> </mml:mrow> <mml:mi>Q</mml:mi> <mml:mo stretchy="false">(</mml:mo> <mml:mi>z</mml:mi> <mml:mo stretchy="false">)</mml:mo> </mml:mrow> <mml:annotation encoding="application/x-tex">1/Q(z)</mml:annotation> </mml:semantics> </mml:math> </inline-formula> is <inline-formula content-type="math/mathml"> <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" alttext="k"> <mml:semantics> <mml:mi>k</mml:mi> <mml:annotation encoding="application/x-tex">k</mml:annotation> </mml:semantics> </mml:math> </inline-formula> -regular.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".