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show that $$\lim_{n\to \infty}\sin{(n^m)}$$ divergent,where $m\in N^{+}$

I have kown $$\lim_{n\to\infty}\sin{n^2}$$ to be divergent and dense in $[-1,1]$. This is very famous problem,the problem is first is post $AMM$( The American Mathematical Monthly,1970-1975) problem,and after some years $AMM$ post $\sin{(n^{14})}$ in $[-1,1]$ was dense? and this is open problem.so I Guess $$\sin{(n^m)}$$ is dense in $[-1,1]$.

math110
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    I assume you mean $\sin(n^m)$ rather than $(\sin n)^m$. How do you know that $\sin(n^2)$ are dense in $[-1,1]$? – Robert Israel Sep 30 '13 at 05:53
  • Yes, I have edit,Thank you – math110 Sep 30 '13 at 06:00
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    The equidistribution theorem gives the case $m=1$, since $1/\pi$ is irrational. Weyl gave an extension to the equidistribution theorem that proves your case $m=2$, but I have not seen anything further. Of course, equidistribution is more than is required here. – awwalker Sep 30 '13 at 06:03
  • Its opposite would be the same as saying that there exists a certain natural number m so that as n grows towards infinity, $|n^m \mod \frac\pi2|$ converges to a certain fixed or constant value. – Lucian Nov 08 '13 at 08:42

2 Answers2

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Suppose $\lim_{n \to \infty} \sin(n^m) = L \in [-1;1]$.

Let $k \ge 3$ be an odd integer. Since $(\sin((kn)^m))$ is a subsequence of $(\sin(n^m))$, it also converges to $L$.
But we have a relation $\sin(k^m x) = P_k(\sin x)$ where $P_k$ is some polynomial. Hence $(\sin((kn)^m) = P_k(\sin(n^m)) \to P_k(L)$, and so, $P_k(L) = L$. Moreover, for any $n_0$, the sequence $u_n = \sin(k^{nm}n_0)$, which can be recursively defined by $u_0 = \sin(n_0)$ and $u_{n+1} = P_k(u_n)$, has to converge to $L$. So not only is $L$ a fixed point of $P_k$, it probably should be an attractive fixed point too.

First, we look at what can possibly be a fixpoint of all those $P_k$.

We know $L = \sin(l)$ for some $l$ satisfying $\sin(k^ml) = \sin(l)$. But $\sin(k^ml) = \sin(l) \iff k^ml \equiv l \pmod {2\pi} \text{ or } k^ml + l \equiv \pi \pmod {2\pi} \\ \iff l = 2a\pi/(k^m-1) \text{ or } l = (2b+1)\pi/(k^m+1)$.

In any case, $l$ must be a rational multiple of $\pi$ : $l = a\pi/b$ for some coprime integers $a$ and $b$ where $b$ divides $k^{2m}-1$.

Suppose $p$ is an odd prime dividing $b$. Then, picking $k=p$, $p$ has to divide $p^{2m}-1$, which is obviously impossible. So $b$ must be a power of $2$.

We can do a similar thing with $(\sin(2^mx))^2 = P((\sin x)^2)$ where $P$ is some polynomial, to show that $\sin(2^ml) = \pm \sin(l)$, which implies $(2^m\pm 1)l \equiv 0 \pmod \pi$, and in any case, $b$ has to divide $2^{2m}-1$, which is odd.

Hence $b=1$ and so we must have $L = 0$.

Now, differentiating $\sin(k^mx) = P_k(\sin x)$ at $0$, we get $P'_k(0) = k^m > 1$. So $0$ is a repulsive fixpoint for every $P_k$ : there is a small interval around $0$ where $P_3$ pushes away from $0$ : if $\sin(n^m)$ is small but nonzero, then $\sin((3n)^m) = P_3(\sin(n^m))$ will be further from $0$ than $\sin((3n)^m)$, until it is pushed out of that interval. So there is no way that the sequence converges to $0$, unless $\sin(n^m) = 0$ for all large enough $n$. But since $\pi$ is irrational, this doesn't happen.


This is all complicated and all, what with having to consider every $P_k$ to rule out the sequence converging anywhere. If you think about it, when we are at some $\sin(l)$ away from $0$, we found a $k_l$ such that $P_{k_l}(\sin(l)) \neq \sin(l)$ : there actually is some open interval $I_l$ containing $\sin(l)$ on which we can see that $P_{k_l}(I_l) \cap I_l = \emptyset$ . If the sequence ever visits $I_l$, then we know for sure that it will leave it since it will have to visit $P_{k_l}(I_l)$. Similarly, we know there exists a small interval $I_0$ around $0$ such that $P_3$ acts like multiplication by $3^m$ and eventually sends anything nonzero away from $0$ (though the greater $m$ is, the smaller $I_0$ is)

Since $[-1;1]$ is compact, if you consider a concrete $m$, you can use only a finite number of those intervals to obtain a very explicit argument going like this : $[-1;1]$ is the reunion of some explicit intervals $I_0,I_1,I_2, \ldots, I_q$, where $0 \in I_0$, and where for each $i > 0$ there is an odd integer $k_i$ such that $P_{k_i}(I_i) \cap I_i = \emptyset$, which prevents the sequence from converging inside any of those $I_i$. And $P_3$ prevents the sequence from converging in $I_0$ unless it is exactly $0$.

mercio
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This is not a full solution, but probably a lead to the final solution. I will use the following result from G H Hardy's "A Course of Pure Mathematics"

If $P(n)$ is a polynomial in $n$ with integral coefficients and $\lim_{n \to \infty}\sin(P(n)\theta\pi) = 0$ then $\theta$ is rational.

In our case $P(n) = n^{m}$ and $\theta = 1/\pi$ so that $\theta$ is irrational and hence $\lim_{n \to \infty}\sin(n^{m})$ can't be zero. This means that if the limit exists it must be of either positive or negative. Taking any case it implies that the expression $\sin(n^{m})$ should be of constant sign for all sufficiently large $n$. This is what I doubt and probably this can be contradicted using some amount of algebra and trigonometry.

Finally it boils down to showing that $[n^{m}/\pi]$ (where $[\,]$ denotes greatest integer function) is even for an infinity of values of $n$ and also odd for another infinity of values of $n$.