An exploration of Nathanson's $g$-adic representations of integers

Abstract

We use Nathanson's $g$-adic representation of integers to relate metric properties of Cayley graphs of the integers with respect to various infinite generating sets $S$ to problems in additive number theory. If $S$ consists of all powers of a fixed integer $g$, we find explicit formulas for the smallest positive integer of a given length. This is related to finding the smallest positive integer expressible as a fixed number of sums and differences of powers of $g$. We also consider $S$ to be the set of all powers of all primes and bound the diameter of Cayley graph by relating it to Goldbach's conjecture.