A subset $A$ of a given finite abelian group $G$ is called $(k,l)$-sum-free if the sum of $k$ (not necessarily distinct) elements of $A$ does not equal the sum of $l$ (not necessarily distinct) elements of $A$. We are interested in finding the maximum size $λ_{k,l}(G)$ of a $(k,l)$-sum-free subset in $G$.
A $(2,1)$-sum-free set is simply called a sum-free set. The maximum size of a sum-free set in the cyclic group $\mathbb{Z}_n$ was found almost forty years ago by Diamanda and Yap; the general case for arbitrary finite abelian groups was recently settled by Green and Ruzsa. Here we find the value of $λ_{3,1}(\mathbb{Z}_n)$. More generally, a recent paper of Hamidoune and Plagne examines $(k,l)$-sum-free sets in $G$ when $k-l$ and the order of $G$ are relatively prime; we extend their results to see what happens without this assumption.
Let G be a finite abelian group. For g in G and i an integer we define N(i,g) to be the number of subsets of G of size i which sum up to g. We will give a short proof, using character theory, of a formula for these N(i,g) due to Li and Wan. We also give a formula for N(i,g)*, the number of subsets of G not containing 0 of size i which sum up to g. This generalizes another result of Wan.
Denoting by Sigma(S) the set of subset sums of a subset S of a finite abelian group G, we prove that |Sigma(S)| >= |S|(|S|+2)/4-1 whenever S is symmetric, |G| is odd and Sigma(S) is aperiodic. Up to an additive constant of 2 this result is best possible, and we obtain the stronger (exact best possible) bound in almost all cases. We prove similar results in the case |G| is even. Our proof requires us to extend a theorem of Olson on the number of subset sums of anti-symmetric subsets S from the case of Z_p to the case of a general finite abelian group. To do so, we adapt Olson's method using a g…
In this note, we give the explicit formula for the number of multisubsets of a finite abelian group $G$ with any given size such that the sum is equal to a given element $g\in G$. This also gives the number of partitions of $g$ into a given number of parts over a finite abelian group. An inclusion-exclusion formula for the number of multisubsets of a subset of $G$ with a given size and a given sum is also obtained.
In this paper we discuss some of the key properties of sum-free subsets of abelian groups. Our discussion has been designed with a broader readership in mind, and is hence not overly technical. We consider answers to questions like: how many sum-free subsets are there in a given abelian group $G$? what are its sum-free subsets of maximum cardinality? what is the maximum cardinality of these sum-free subsets? what does a typical sum-free subset of $G$ looks like? among others.
Let $G$ be an additive abelian group and $S\subset G$ a subset. Let $Σ(S)$ denote the set of group elements which can be expressed as a sum of a nonempty subset of $S$. We say $S$ is zero-sum free if $0 \not\in Σ(S)$. It was conjectured by R.B.~Eggleton and P.~Erdös in 1972 and proved by W.~Gao et. al. in 2008 that $|Σ(S)|\geq 19$ provided that $S$ is a zero-sum free subset of an abelian group $G$ with $|S|=6$. In this paper, we determined the structure of zero-sum free set $S$ where $|S|=6$ and $|Σ(S)|=19$.
By using ergodic theoretic techniques following Hillel Fürstenberg, we prove that measurable subsets of a locally compact abelian group of positive upper density contain Szemerédi-wise configurations defined by an arbitrary compact subset of the group.
Let $G$ be a finite abelian group. For any positive integers $d$ and $m$, let $φ_G(d)$ be the number of elements in $G$ of order $d$ and $\mathsf M(G,m)$ be the set of all zero-sum sequences of length $m$. In this paper, for any finite abelian group $H$, we prove that $$|\mathsf M(G,|H|)|=|\mathsf M(H,|G|)|$$ if and only if $φ_G(d)=φ_H(d)$ for any $d|(|G|,|H|)$. We also consider an extension of this result to non-abelian groups in terms of invariant theory.
The purpose of the article is to provide an unified way to formulate zero-sum invariants. Let $G$ be a finite additive abelian group. Let $B(G)$ denote the set consisting of all nonempty zero-sum sequences over G. For $Ω\subset B(G$), let $d_Ω(G)$ be the smallest integer $t$ such that every sequence $S$ over $G$ of length $|S|\geq t$ has a subsequence in $Ω$.We provide some first results and open problems on $d_Ω(G)$.
Let A be a subset of an abelian group G. We say that A is sum-free if there do not exist x,y and z in A satisfying x + y = z. We determine, for any G, the cardinality of the largest sum-free subset of G. This equals c(G)|G| where c(G) is a constant depending on G and lying in the interval [2/7,1/2]. We also estimate the number of sum-free subsets of G. It turns out that log_2 of this number is c(G)|G| + o(|G|), which is tight up to the o-term. For certain abelian groups, those whose order is divisible by a small prime of the form 3k + 2, we can obtain an asymptotic for the number of sum-free s…
Let $G$ be a finite abelian group with exponent $n$. Let $η(G)$ denote the smallest integer $\ell$ such that every sequence over $G$ of length at least $\ell$ has a zero-sum subsequence of length at most $n$. We determine the precise value of $η(G)$ when $G$ is a $p$-group whose Davenport constant is at most $2n-1$. This confirms one of the equalities in a conjecture by Schmid and Zhuang from 2010.
Given a subset $W$ of an abelian group $G$, a subset $C$ is called an additive complement for $W$ if $W+C=G$; if, moreover, no proper subset of $C$ has this property, then we say that $C$ is a minimal complement for $W$. It is natural to ask which subsets $C$ can arise as minimal complements for some $W$. We show that in a finite abelian group $G$, every non-empty subset $C$ of size $|C| \leq 2^{2/3}|G|^{1/3}/((3e \log |G|)^{2/3}$ is a minimal complement for some $W$. As a corollary, we deduce that every finite non-empty subset of an infinite abelian group is a minimal complement. We also deri…
In this paper we study sum-free sets of order $m$ in finite Abelian groups. We prove a general theorem on 3-uniform hypergraphs, which allows us to deduce structural results in the sparse setting from stability results in the dense setting. As a consequence, we determine the typical structure and asymptotic number of sum-free sets of order $m$ in Abelian groups $G$ whose order is divisible by a prime $q$ with $q \equiv 2 \pmod 3$, for every $m \ge C(q) \sqrt{n \log n}$, thus extending and refining a theorem of Green and Ruzsa. In particular, we prove that almost all sum-free subsets of size $m…
A subset $D$ of an Abelian group is $decomposable$ if $\emptyset\ne D\subset D+D$. In the paper we give partial answer to an open problem asking whether every finite decomposable subset $D$ of an Abelian group contains a non-empty subset $Z\subset D$ with $\sum Z=0$. For every $n\in\mathbb N$ we present a decomposable subset $D$ of cardinality $|D|=n$ in the cyclic group of order $2^n-1$ such that $\sum D=0$, but $\sum T\ne 0$ for any proper non-empty subset $T\subset D$. On the other hand, we prove that every decomposable subset $D\subset\mathbb R$ of cardinality $|D|\le 7$ contains a non-emp…
Given two non-empty subsets $W,W'\subseteq G$ in an arbitrary abelian group $G$, $W'$ is said to be an additive complement to $W$ if $W + W'=G$ and it is minimal if no proper subset of $W'$ is a complement to $W$. The notion was introduced by Nathanson and previous work by him, Chen--Yang, Kiss--Sàndor--Yang etc. focussed on $G =\mathbb{Z}$. In the higher rank case, recent work by the authors treated a class of subsets, namely the eventually periodic sets. However, for infinite subsets, not of the above type, the question of existence or inexistence of minimal complements is open. In this arti…
Suppose that $A$, $B$ and $S$ are non-empty subsets of a finite abelian group $G$. Then the generalized restricted sumset $$ A\stackrel{S}+B:=\{a+b:\,a\in A,\ b\in B,\ a-b\not\in S\} $$ contains at least $$ \min\{|A|+|B|-3|S|,p(G)\} $$ elements, where $p(G)$ is the least prime factor of $|G|$. Further, we also have $$ |A\stackrel{S}+B|\geq \min\{|A|+|B|-|S|-2,p(G)\}, $$ provided that both $|A|$ and $|B|$ are large with respect to $|S|$.
Let $G$ be a finite, non-trivial abelian group of exponent $m$, and suppose that $B_1, ..., B_k$ are generating subsets of $G$. We prove that if $k>2m \ln \log_2 |G|$, then the multiset union $B_1\cup...\cup B_k$ forms an additive basis of $G$; that is, for every $g\in G$ there exist $A_1\subset B_1, ..., A_k\subset B_k$ such that $g=\sum_{i=1}^k\sum_{a\in A_i} a$. This generalizes a result of Alon, Linial, and Meshulam on the additive bases conjecture. As another step towards proving the conjecture, in the case where $B_1, ..., B_k$ are finite subsets of a vector space we obtain lower-bound e…
Let $A$ be a finite, nonempty subset of an abelian group. We show that if every element of $A$ is a sum of two other elements, then $A$ has a nonempty zero-sum subset. That is, a (finite, nonempty) sum-full subset of an abelian group is not zero-sum-free.
We characterize the structure of maximum-size sum-free subsets of a random subset of an Abelian group $G$. In particular, we determine the threshold $p_c \approx \sqrt{\log n / n}$ above which, with high probability as $|G| \to \infty$, each such subset is contained in a maximum-size sum-free subset of $G$, whenever $q$ divides $|G|$ for some (fixed) prime $q$ with $q \equiv 2 \pmod 3$. Moreover, in the special case $G = \ZZ_{2n}$, we determine a sharp threshold for the above property. The proof uses recent 'transference' theorems of Conlon and Gowers, together with stability theorems for sum-…
Motivated by the open problem of exhibiting a subset of Euclidean space which has no exponential Riesz basis, we focus on exponential Riesz bases in finite abelian groups. We point out that that every subset of a finite abelian group has such a basis, removing interest in the existence question in this context. We then define tightness quantities for subsets to measure the conditioning of Riesz bases; for normalized tightness quantities, a value of one corresponds to an orthogonal basis, and a value of infinity corresponds to nonexistence of a basis. As an application, we obtain new weak evide…
Let $G$ be a finite abelian group. The critical number ${\rm cr}(G)$ of $G$ is the least positive integer $\ell$ such that every subset $A\subseteq G\setminus\{0\}$ of cardinality at least $\ell$ spans $G$, i.e., every element of $G$ can be written as a nonempty sum of distinct elements of $A$. The exact values of the critical number have been completely determined recently for all finite abelian groups. The structure of these sets of cardinality ${\rm cr}(G)-1$ which fail to span $G$ has also been characterized except for the case that $|G|$ is an even number and the case that $|G|=pq$ with $…
Let $g$ be a simple Lie algebra and $Ab(g)$ the set of Abelian ideals of a Borel subalgebra of $g$. In this note, an interesting connection between $Ab(g)$ and the subsets of the Dynkin diagram of $g$ is discussed. We notice that the number of abelian ideals with $k$ generators equals the number of subsets of the Dynkin diagram with $k$ connected components. For $g$ of type $A_n$ or $C_n$, we provide a combinatorial explanation of this coincidence by constructing a suitable bijection. We also construct another general bijection between $Ab(g)$ and the subsets of the Dynkin diagram, which is ba…
A set of elements of a finite abelian group is called sum-free if it contains no Schur triple, i.e., no triple of elements $x,y,z$ with $x+y=z$. The study of how large the largest sum-free subset of a given abelian group is had started more than thirty years before it was finally resolved by Green and Ruzsa a decade ago. We address the following more general question. Suppose that a set $A$ of elements of an abelian group $G$ has cardinality $a$. How many Schur triples must $A$ contain? Moreover, which sets of $a$ elements of $G$ have the smallest number of Schur triples? In this paper, we ans…
Suppose $G$ is a finite abelian group and $S$ is a sequence of elements in $G$. For any element $g$ of $G$, let $N_g(S)$ denote the number of subsequences of $S$ with sum $g$. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the lower bound for $N_g(S)$. In particular, we prove that either $N_g(S)=0$ or $N_g(S) \ge 2^{|S|-D(G)+1}$, where $D(G)$ is the smallest positive integer $\ell$ such that every sequence over $G$ of length at least $\ell$ has a nonempty zero-sum subsequence. We also characterize the structures of the extremal sequences for which the equality holds for some groups.
By definition, the sharp packing index $\ind_P^\sharp(A)$ of a subset $A$ of an abelian group $G$ is the smallest cardinal $κ$ such that for any subset $B\subset G$ of size $|B|\geκ$ the family $\{b+A:b\in B\}$ is not disjoint. We prove that an infinite Abelian group $G$ contains a subset $A$ with given index $\ind_P^\sharp(A)=κ$ if and only if one of the following conditions holds: (1) $2\le κ\le|G|^+$ and $k\notin \{3,4\}$; (2) $κ=3$ and $G$ is not isomorphic to $\oplus_{i\in I} \mathbb{Z}_3$; (3) $κ=4$ and $G$ is not isomorphic to $\oplus_{i\in I} \mathbb{Z}_2$ or to $\mathbb{Z}_4\oplus(\op…
Zero-sum problems for abelian groups and covers of the integers by residue classes, are two different active topics initiated by P. Erdos more than 40 years ago and investigated by many researchers separately since then. In an earlier announcement [Electron. Res. Announc. Amer. Math. Soc. 9(2003), 51-60], the author claimed some surprising connections among these seemingly unrelated fascinating areas. In this paper we establish further connections between zero-sum problems for abelian p-groups and covers of the integers. For example, we extend the famous Erdos-Ginzburg-Ziv theorem in the follo…
Subset-Sum Density Realization in Locally Finite Abelian Groups
Eötvös University（厄特沃什·罗兰大学）；Alfréd Rényi Institute（阿尔弗雷德·雷尼研究所）；Institute of Mathematics and Interdisciplinary Sciences at Xidian University（西安电子科技大学数学与交叉科学研究院）；Institute of Mathematical Sciences, ShanghaiTech University（上海科技大学数学科学研究所）
We study sum-free sets in sparse random subsets of even order abelian groups. In particular, we determine the sharp threshold for the following property: the largest such set is contained in some maximum-size sum-free subset of the group. This theorem extends recent work of Balogh, Morris and Samotij, who resolved the case G = Z_{2n}, and who obtained a weaker threshold (up to a constant factor) in general.
The paper deals with a problem of Additive Combinatorics. Let ${\mathbf G}$ be a finite abelian group of order $N$. We prove that the number of subset triples $A,B,C\subset {\mathbf G}$ such that for any $x\in A$, $y\in B$ and $z\in C$ one has $x+y\ne z$ equals $$ 3\cdot 4^N+N3^{N+1} + O((3-c_*)^N) $$ for some absolute constant $c_*>0$. This provides a tight estimate for the number of independent sets in a special 3-uniform linear hypergraph and gives a support for the natural conjecture concerning the maximal possible number of independent sets in such hypergraphs on $n$ vertices.
In this paper, we study the minimal number of elements of maximal order within a zero-sumfree sequence in a finite Abelian p-group. For this purpose, in the general context of finite Abelian groups, we introduce a new number, for which lower and upper bounds are proved in the case of finite Abelian p-groups. Among other consequences, the method that we use here enables us to show that, if we denote by exp(G) the exponent of the finite Abelian p-group G which is considered, then a zero-sumfree sequence S with maximal possible length in G must contain at least exp(G)-1 elements of maximal order,…
In this paper, we present a reciprocity on finite abelian groups involving zero-sum sequences. Let $G$ and $H$ be finite abelian groups with $(|G|,|H|)=1$. For any positive integer $m$, let $\mathsf M(G,m)$ denote the set of all zero-sum sequences over $G$ of length $m$. We have the following reciprocity $$|\mathsf M(G,|H|)|=|\mathsf M(H,|G|)|.$$ Moreover, we provide a combinatorial interpretation of the above reciprocity using ideas from rational Catalan combinatorics. We also present and explain some other symmetric relationships on finite abelian groups with methods from invariant theory. A…
Martin Kneser proved the following addition theorem for every abelian group $G$. If $A,B \subseteq G$ are finite and nonempty, then $|A+B| \ge |A+K| + |B+K| - |K|$ where $K = \{g \in G \mid g+A+B = A+B \}$. Here we give a short proof of this based on a simple intersection union argument.
For a finite abelian group $G$ with subsets $A$ and $B$, the sumset $AB$ is $\{ab \mid a\in A, b \in B\}$. A fundamental problem in additive combinatorics is to find a lower bound for the cardinality of $AB$ in terms of the cardinalities of $A$ and $B$. This article addresses the analogous problem for sequences in abelian groups and flags in field extensions. For a positive integer $n$, let $[n]$ denote the set $\{0,\dots,n-1\}$. To a finite abelian group $G$ of cardinality $n$ and an ordering $G = \{1=v_0,\dots,v_{n-1}\}$, associate the function $T \colon [n] \times [n] \rightarrow [n]$ defin…
A subset $A$ of a finite abelian group is called $(k,\ell)$-sum-free if $kA \cap \ell A=\emptyset.$ In this paper, we extend this concept to compact abelian groups and study the question of how large a measurable $(k,\ell)$-sum-free set can be. For integers $1 \leq k <\ell$ and a compact abelian group $G$, let $$λ_{k,\ell}(G)=\sup\{ μ(A): kA \cap \ell A =\emptyset \}$$ be the maximum possible size of a $(k,\ell)$-sum-free subset of $G$. We prove that if $G=\mathbb{I} \times M$, where $\mathbb{I}$ is the identity component of $G$, then $$λ_{k, \ell}(G)=\max \left\{ λ_{k, \ell}(M), λ_{k, \ell}(\…
In this paper we propose a conjecture concerning partial sums of an arbitrary finite subset of an abelian group, that naturally arises investigating simple Heffter systems. Then, we show its connection with related open problems and we present some results about the validity of these conjectures.
In an abelian group G, a more sums than differences (MSTD) set is a subset A of G such that |A+A|>|A-A|. We provide asymptotics for the number of MSTD sets in finite abelian groups, extending previous results of Nathanson. The proof contains an application of a recently resolved conjecture of Alon and Kahn on the number of independent sets in a regular graph.
A well-known result by Kemperman describes the structure of those pairs (A,B) of finite subsets of an abelian group satisfying |A+B|\le|A|+|B|-1. We establish a description which is, in a sense, dual to Kemperman's, and as an application sharpen several results due to Deshouillers, Hamidoune, Hennecart, and Plagne.
The distribution of cardinalities of zero-sum sets in abelian groups is completely determined. A complex summation involving the Möbius function is given for the general abelian group, while in many special cases, including the case of elementary abelian groups, solved earlier by Li and Wan, it has a compact form. The proof involves two different Möbius transforms, on positive integers and on set partitions.
Let $A$ be a multiset with elements in an abelian group. Let $FS(A)$ be the multiset containing the $2^{|A|}$ sums of all subsets of $A$. We study the reconstruction problem ``Given $FS(A)$, is it possible to identify $A$?'', and we give a satisfactory answer for all abelian groups. We prove that, up to identifying multisets through a natural equivalence relation, the function $A \mapsto FS(A)$ is injective (and thus the reconstruction problem is solvable) if and only if every order $n$ of a torsion element of the abelian group satisfies a certain number-theoretical property linked to the mult…
Let G be a finite Abelian group and A be a subset G\times G of cardinality at least |G|^2/(log log |G|)^c, where c>0 is an absolute constant. We prove that A contains a triple {(k,m), (k+d,m), (k,m+d)}, where d does not equal 0. This theorem is a two-dimensional generalization of Szemeredi's theorem on arithmetic progressions.
We show that a non-empty subset of an abelian group with a small edge boundary must be large; in particular, if $A$ and $S$ are finite, non-empty subsets of an abelian group such that $S$ is independent, and the edge boundary of $A$ with respect to $S$ does not exceed $(1-γ)|S||A|$ with a real $γ\in(0,1]$, then $|A| \ge 4^{(1-1/d)γ|S|}$, where $d$ is the smallest order of an element of $S$. Here the constant $4$ is best possible. As a corollary, we derive an upper bound for the size of the largest independent subset of the set of popular differences of a finite subset of an abelian group. For …
For a compact abelian group $G$, a corner in $G \times G$ is a triple of points $(x,y)$, $(x,y+d)$, $(x+d,y)$. The classical corners theorem of Ajtai and Szemerédi implies that for every $α> 0$, there is some $δ> 0$ such that every subset $A \subset G \times G$ of density $α$ contains a $δ$ fraction of all corners in $G \times G$, as $x,y,d$ range over $G$. Recently, Mandache proved a "popular differences" version of this result in the finite field case $G = \mathbb F_p^n$, showing that for any subset $A \subset G \times G$ of density $α$, one can fix $d \neq 0$ such that $A$ contains a large …
Given a topological group $G$ we calculate or evaluate the cardinal characteristic $c_k(G)$ (and $c_k^B(G)$) equal to the smallest cardinality of a $k$-centerpole subset $C\subset G$ for (Borel) colorings of $G$. A subset $C\subset G$ of a topological group $G$ is called {\em $k$-centerpole} if for each (Borel) $k$-coloring of $G$ there is an unbounded monochromatic subset $G$, which is symmetric with respect to a point $c\in C$ in the sense that $S=cS^{-1}c$.
We show that if G is a group and A is a finite subset of G with |A^2| < K|A|, then for all k there is a symmetric neighbourhood of the identity S with S^k a subset of A^2A^{-2} and |S| > exp(-K^{O(k)})|A|.
We prove an arithmetic removal result for all compact abelian groups, generalizing a finitary removal result of Král', Serra and the third author. To this end, we consider infinite measurable hypergraphs that are invariant under certain group actions, and for these hypergraphs we prove a symmetry-preserving removal lemma, which extends a finitary result of the same name by the second author. We deduce our arithmetic removal result by applying this lemma to a specific type of invariant measurable hypergraph. As a direct application, we obtain the following generalization of Szemerédi's theorem:…
Given a finite subset A of an abelian group G, we study the set k \wedge A of all sums of k distinct elements of A. In this paper, we prove that |k \wedge A| >= |A| for all k in {2,...,|A|-2}, unless k is in {2,|A|-2} and A is a coset of an elementary 2-subgroup of G. Furthermore, we characterize those finite subsets A of G for which |k \wedge A| = |A| for some k in {2,...,|A|-2}. This result answers a question of Diderrich. Our proof relies on an elementary property of proper edge-colourings of the complete graph.
