Ramsey Functions Associated with Second Order Recurrences

Numbers similar to the van der Waerden numbers \(w(n)\) are studied, where the class of arithmetic progressions is replaced by certain larger classes. If \(\mathcal{A}’\) is such a larger class, we define \(w'(n)\) to be the least positive integer such that every \(2\)-coloring of \(\{1, 2, \ldots, w'(n)\}\) will contain a monochromatic member of \(\mathcal{A}’\). We consider sequences of positive integers \(\{x_1, \ldots, x_n\}\) which satisfy \(x_i = a_i x_{i-1} + b_i x_{i-2}\) for \(i = 3, \ldots, n\) with various restrictions placed on the \(a_i\) and \(b_i\). Upper bounds are given for the corresponding functions \(w'(n)\). Further, it is shown that the existence of somewhat stronger bounds on \(w'(n)\) would imply certain bounds for \(w(n)\).