Gaussian Behavior in Zeckendorf Decompositions From Lattices

Abstract

Zeckendorf's Theorem states that any positive integer can be written uniquely as a sum of non-adjacent Fibonacci numbers. We consider higher-dimensional lattice analogues, where a legal decomposition of a number $n$ is a collection of lattice points such that each point is included at most once. Once a point is chosen, all future points must have strictly smaller coordinates, and the pairwise sum of the values of the points chosen equals $n$. We prove that the distribution of the number of summands in these lattice decompositions converges to a Gaussian distribution in any number of dimensions. As an immediate corollary we obtain a new proof for the asymptotic number of certain lattice paths.