In mathematics

Mathematics

Mathematics is the study of quantity, space, structure, and change. Mathematicians seek out patterns and formulate new conjectures. Mathematicians resolve the truth or falsity of conjectures by mathematical proofs, which are arguments sufficient to convince other mathematicians of their validity...

, a Lucas chain is a restricted type of addition chain

Addition chain

In mathematics, an addition chain for computing a positive integer n can be given by a sequence of natural numbers v and a sequence of index pairs w such that each term in v is the sum of two previous terms, the indices of those terms being specified by w:Often only v is given since it is easy to...

, named for the French mathematician Édouard Lucas

Edouard Lucas

François Édouard Anatole Lucas was a French mathematician. Lucas is known for his study of the Fibonacci sequence. The related Lucas sequences and Lucas numbers are named after him.-Biography:...

. It is a sequence

Sequence

In mathematics, a sequence is an ordered list of objects . Like a set, it contains members , and the number of terms is called the length of the sequence. Unlike a set, order matters, and exactly the same elements can appear multiple times at different positions in the sequence...

a₀, a₁, a₂, a₃, ...

that satisfies

a₀=1,

and

for each k > 0: a_k = a_i + a_j, and either a_i = a_j or |a_i − a_j| = a_m, for some i, j, m < k.

The sequence of powers of 2 (1, 2, 4, 8, 16, ...) and the Fibonacci sequence (with a slight adjustment of the starting point 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, ...) are simple examples of Lucas chains.

Lucas chains were introduced by Peter Montgomery

Peter Montgomery

Peter Lawrence Montgomery is an American mathematician who has published widely in the more mathematical end of the field of cryptography. He is currently a researcher in the cryptography group at Microsoft Research....

.