# Van der Waerden without topological dynamics?

Applying topological dynamics to prove Van der Waerden's theorem on the existence of monochromatic arithmetic progression has now become a somewhat classical example of the power of topological dynamics techniques.

However, since the statement of the theorem is purely algebraic or number theoretic, I wonder whether there is a proof without using the machinery from dynamics and I guess such a proof might give more insight on the matter of the fact.

Thanks!

ps: How come there is no "topological dynamics"tag?

• I think the Wikipedia article explains the classical proof pretty well. You do a double induction of the number of colors and the length of the progression you need. – MJD Mar 26 '12 at 2:39
• A nice explanation of proof of vdW is given in Khinchin's book Three pearls of number theory. (Original: Три жемчужины теории чисел.) – Martin Sleziak Oct 19 '15 at 7:45

4. Gowers' proofs that developed an analytic-algebraic-probabilistic context in which to understand and generalize the van der Waerden, Hales-Jewett, Szemerédi and other theorems of the same type. This approach proves iterated exponential bounds like $2^{2^{cn^d}}$ for some constants depending on the density (or the same with another $2$ in the tower, but the difference compared to the Shelah bounds is that height of the tower is independent of the length of the progression). Gowers also proves lower bounds of unbounded tower type for some of the constructions used in earlier proofs of generalized van der Waerden theorems but the true growth rate of the vdW numbers is not known.