How statement and proof provenance work
The first chip identifies the source of the statement or construction; the second identifies the source of its local proof or verification.
- Literature-sourced: the exact statement appears in a cited source; only wording and notation differ.
- AI-adapted: a semantically identical restatement of literature-sourced material, modulo indexing, notation, and boundary cases adopted by the library.
- AI-generated: a genuinely novel statement formulated by AI, with no source for the claim itself.
These labels describe origin, not correctness: citations and verification chips remain separate evidence.
Statement
For a natural number write for the canonical natural of (Canonical naturals are positive and strictly increasing) and , for its roots (Existence and uniqueness of -th roots: a unique with , Rational powers of a positive base). Then:
- for every natural ;
- the sequence , , converges to (Limits and Cauchy sequences of reals).
The index range is not cosmetic. The expression is defined only for , since is not a rational number when (Rational powers of a positive base). Sequences in this library are functions on and contains (Sequences of reals: bounded, eventually, frequently, tails, subsequences), so the statement of convergence is made about the shifted family , which is the classical family , , reindexed by . Claim 1 is stated over the natural range where the expression means something.
Facts & Assumptions
Given: For a natural the canonical natural , extended by ; this extension keeps the additivity of Canonical naturals are positive and strictly increasing, which for or equal to reads .
Roots: for real and natural there is a unique real with , written ; it is when , and (Existence and uniqueness of -th roots: a unique with , Integer powers ).
Rational powers and monotonicity: is the rational power at , and for rational one has whenever ; also for (Rational powers of a positive base, Monotonicity of and of , Laws of rational exponents).
AM-GM: for a natural and reals , the geometric mean is the arithmetic mean (The arithmetic mean, geometric mean inequality).
Finite sums and products: the empty sum is and the empty product ; sums and products split at any intermediate index; and for a constant (Finite sums and finite products, by recursion, Laws of finite sums and finite products).
Induction principle (The principle of mathematical induction).
Canonical naturals: and is invertible for , is strictly increasing, and ; the Archimedean property gives, for every real , a natural with (Canonical naturals are positive and strictly increasing, Every complete ordered field is Archimedean).
Order and reciprocals: gives ; multiplying an inequality by a positive element preserves it; and inequalities may be added and translated (Inverses of positives are positive, and reciprocation reverses order, Sign rules for products and monotonicity of multiplication, Order is preserved by adding a constant and by adding inequalities).
Squares: for one has if and only if (Monotonicity of and of , Integer powers ).
Squeeze theorem, and the fact that a constant sequence converges to its value; to establish convergence it suffices to produce a threshold for every real (The squeeze theorem, Sequences of reals: bounded, eventually, frequently, tails, subsequences, Limits and Cauchy sequences of reals).
The order on is total and respects it (Order on the natural numbers, is a linear order on ).
Proof
For a natural the element is positive and invertible, so and exist and are positive.
For every natural one has : the empty product is , and if then , so this follows by induction on .
For one has and ; for one has and is a positive rational, so . In either case .
Let and put , so that and . Apply [L3] to the list of nonnegative reals given by and for , the latter range being empty when . Splitting at index gives by step 1.2, so the geometric mean is ; and , using additivity of and , so the arithmetic mean is . Since and , and , this gives .
For the same bound holds trivially: .
The sequence converges to . Given a real , put and take a natural with . For we have , hence , and since with both factors , this forces . Therefore , that is .
Claim 1 is the combination of steps 2.1, 2.2 and 2.3, the two upper bounds covering and respectively.
For every the natural is , so claim 1 gives . The constant sequence converges to and converges to by step 2.4, so the squeeze theorem gives , which is claim 2.
Remarks
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Where the comes from. AM-GM is applied to a list whose product is but whose entries are as close to as possible: two copies of and copies of . The arithmetic mean is then , which tends to at the rate . Splitting as rather than as is the whole trick: the list gives only , which does not converge to .
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The lower bound is not decoration. Without the squeeze has nothing below it, and the upper bound alone would leave open a limit smaller than . It comes from monotonicity of rational powers in the base (Monotonicity of and of ) and holds with equality only at .
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No logarithm and no exponential is used. The usual quick proof writes and appeals to ; neither function exists in this library yet, and the AM-GM route needs nothing beyond roots and finite sums.
Depends on
Existence and uniqueness of -th roots: a unique with
The arithmetic mean, geometric mean inequality
Rational powers of a positive base
Monotonicity of and of
Laws of rational exponents
The squeeze theorem
Every complete ordered field is Archimedean
Inverses of positives are positive, and reciprocation reverses order
Sign rules for products and monotonicity of multiplication
Canonical naturals are positive and strictly increasing
Monotonicity of and of
Integer powers
Limits and Cauchy sequences of reals
Sequences of reals: bounded, eventually, frequently, tails, subsequences
Finite sums and finite products, by recursion
Laws of finite sums and finite products
The principle of mathematical induction
Order is preserved by adding a constant and by adding inequalities
Order on the natural numbers
is a linear order on