On finiteness theorems for sums of generalized polygonal numbers

Abstract

In this paper, we consider mixed sums of generalized polygonal numbers. Specifically, we obtain a finiteness condition for universality of such sums; this means that it suffices to check representability of a finite subset of the positive integers in order to conclude that the sum of generalized polygonal numbers represents every positive integer. The sub-class of sums of generalized polygonal numbers which we consider is those sums of $m_j$-gonal numbers for which $\mathrm{lcm}(m_1-2,\dots ,m_r-2)\le \mathfrak{M}$ and we obtain a bound on the asymptotic growth of a constant ${\Gamma }_{\mathfrak{M}}$ such that it suffices to check the representability condition for $n\le {\Gamma }_{\mathfrak{M}}$.