[Solved]: Prove that the language of unary not-prime numbers satisfies the Pumping Lemma

Problem Detail: 

Here is a question from Daniel I. A. Cohen's book Introduction to Computer Theory:

Consider the language:

$\quad \mathrm{PRIME}' = \{ a^n \mid n \text{ is not a prime} \} = \{ \varepsilon, a, aaaa, aaaaaa, aaaaaaaa, \ldots \}$

1. Prove that $\mathrm{PRIME}'$ is non-regular.
2. Prove, however, that $\mathrm{PRIME}'$ does satisfy the pumping lemma.

Part 1. is really easy to prove. I start my proof of part 2. like this:

1. We pick $m$ s.t. $m \geq 4$.
2. The opponent picks $w = a^{n^2}$, where $n$ is any prime number greater than m.

Now I don't know how to decompose $w$ into $xyz$. Any help would be appreciated.

---

Update: According to the answers below, $\mathrm{PRIME}'$ doesn't satisfy the Pumping Lemma we commonly talk about (requiring $|xy| \leq m$). I have checked the book at the library and found there are two versions of the Pumping Lemma in it. The weaker one, which clearly this question refers to, doesn't require a fixed pumping length.

Asked By : Stupident

Answered By : Raphael

Let $w \in \mathrm{PRIME}'$ with $|w| \geq 5$. Distinguish two cases.

1. $|w|$ is even -- in that case, choose $x = \varepsilon$, $y = aa$ and $z = a^{|w|-2}$. Then, for all $i\geq 0$, we have $|xy^iz|$ is even and greater than two, as $|z| \geq 3$, and therefore not prime; $xy^iz \in \mathrm{PRIME}'$.

2. $|w|$ is odd -- in this case, we can not verify the pumping property. This can be seen as follows.

   We have

   $\quad \forall m \geq 1.\, \exists n \geq m.\, \forall 1 < k \leq m.\, \gcd(k, n-k) = 1 \qquad (\star)$

   that is for every assumed pumping length $m$, there is a longer word $a^n$ which you can not separate into $a^k$ and $a^{n-k}$ with $k \leq m$ (note that $k=1$ trivially violates the pumping property) so that $k$ and $n-k$ share a divisor. Therefore, we can invoke Dirichlet's theorem for every possible separation, which yields that there are (infinitely many) primes you get by $(n-k) + ik$. So we can't find a pumpable split of $a^n$, and thus the pumping property is violated for $a^n$, which is enough to "contradict" the lemma.

   $(\star)$ can be shown by contradiction. Pick $n>m$ non-prime so that $n$ has no prime factor $\leq m$, e.g. $n = p^2$ for $p\geq m$ prime. Assume there was a $1<k\leq m$ so that some $1<d\leq k$ divided both $k$ and $n-k$, i.e. $k = id$ and $n-k = jd$ for some natural $i,j$. But then, $n = (i+j)d$, i.e. $d \leq m$ divides $n$, which contradicts the choice of $n$.

Best Answer from StackOverflow

Question Source : http://cs.stackexchange.com/questions/9104