For set $A\subset {\mathbb {F}_p}^*$ define by ${\mathsf{sf}}(A)$ the size of the largest sum--free subset of $A.$ Alon and Kleitman showed that ${\mathsf{sf}} (A) \ge |A|/3+O(|A|/p).$ We prove that if ${\mathsf{sf}} (A)-|A|/3$ is small then the set $A$ must be uniformly distributed on cosets of each large multiplicative subgroup. Our argument relies on irregularity of distribution of multiplicative subgroups on certain intervals in ${\mathbb {F}_p}$.
We study extremal problems about sets of integers that do not contain sumsets with summands of prescribed size. We analyse both finite sets and infinite sequences. We also study the connections of these problems with extremal problems of graphs and hypergraphs.
We improve a result of Solymosi on sum-products in R, namely, we prove that max{|A+A|,|AA|}\gg |A|^{4/3+c}, where c>0 is an absolute constant. New lower bounds for sums of sets with small product set are found. Previous results are improved effectively for sets A from R with |AA| \le |A|^{4/3}.
Cameron introduced a bijection between the set of sum-free sets and the set of all zero-one sequences. In this paper, we study the sum-free sets of natural numbers corresponding to certain zero-one sequences which contain the Cantor-like sequences and some substitution sequences, etc. Those sum- free sets considered as integer sequences are 2-regular. We also prove that sequences corresponding to certain sum-free sets are automatic.
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 show that, in contrast to the integers setting, almost all even order abelian groups $G$ have exponentially fewer maximal sum-free sets than $2^{μ(G)/2}$, where $μ(G)$ denotes the size of a largest sum-free set in $G$. This confirms a conjecture of Balogh, Liu, Sharifzadeh and Treglown.
We describe general connections between intersective properties of sets in Abelian groups and positive exponential sums. In particular, given a set $A$ the maximal size of a set whose difference set avoids $A$ will be related to positive exponential sums using frequencies from $A$.
Using a new graphical representation for partitions, the author obtains a family of partition identities associated with partitions into distinct parts of an arithmetic progression, or, more generally, with partitions into distinct parts of a set that is a finite union of arithmetic progressions associated with a modular sum-free Sidon set. Partition identities are also constructed for sets associated with modular sum-free sets.
Let $A$ be a subset of $\mathbb{Z} / N\mathbb{Z}$ and let $\mathcal{R}$ be the set of large Fourier coefficients of $A$. Properties of $\mathcal{R}$ have been studied in works of M.-- C. Chang, B. Green and the author. In the paper we obtain some new results on sets of large exponential sums.
We present an elementary proof that if $A$ is a finite set of numbers, and the sumset $A+_GA$ is small, $|A+_GA|\leq c|A|$, along a dense graph $G$, then $A$ contains $k$-term arithmetic progressions.
We obtain a new bound on certain double sums of multiplicative characters improving the range of several previous results. This improvement comes from new bounds on the number of collinear triples in finite fields, which is a classical object of study of additive combinatorics.
Given a subset of real numbers $A$ with small product $AA$ we obtain a new upper bound for the additive energy of $A$. The proof uses a natural observation that level sets of convolutions of the characteristic function of $A$ have small product with $A$.
We give a sharpened form of Siegel Lemma's w. r. t. the maximum norm. This implies a new lower bound on the greatest element of a sum-distinct set of positive integers (Erdös-Moser problem). The main tools are Minkowski's theorem on successive minima and the Busemann theorem from convex geometry.
Improving upon earlier results of Freiman and the present authors, we show that if $p$ is a sufficiently large prime and $A$ is a sum-free subset of the group of order $p$, such that $n:=|A|>0.318p$, then $A$ is contained in a dilation of the interval $[n,p-n]\pmod p$.
Suppose that P is an infinite set of primes such that P = A + B + C, where A,B,C are sets with at least two elements. We show that if P(x) > c x/log^d x (where P(x) = the number of elements of P that are <= x), and if A,B,C is a "regular" triple of sets, then either |A+B| <= d, or |B+C| <= d, or |A+C| <= d.
We prove that for an arbitrary $κ\le \frac{1}{3}$ any subset of $\mathbf{F}_p$ avoiding $t$ linear equations with three variables has size less than $O(p/t^κ)$. We also find several applications to problems about so--called non--averaging sets, number of collinear triples and mixed energies.
If $P$ is a lattice polytope (that is, the convex hull of a finite set of lattice points in $\mathbf{R}^n$), then every sum of $h$ lattice points in $P$ is a lattice point in the $h$-fold sumset $hP$. However, a lattice point in the $h$-fold sumset $hP$ is not necessarily the sum of $h$ lattice points in $P$. It is proved that if the polytope $P$ is a union of unimodular simplices, then every lattice point in the $h$-fold sumset $hP$ is the sum of $h$ lattice points in $P$.
We prove the following theorem: for all positive integers $b$ there exists a positive integer $k$, such that for every finite set $A$ of integers with cardinality $|A| > 1$, we have either $$ |A + ... + A| \geq |A|^b$$ or $$ |A \cdot ... \cdot A| \geq |A|^b$$ where $A + ... + A$ and $A \cdot ... \cdot A$ are the collections of $k$-fold sums and products of elements of $A$ respectively. This is progress towards a conjecture of Erdös and Szemerédi on sum and product sets.
Let A be a finite subset of the integers or, more generally, of any abelian group, written additively. The set A has "more sums than differences" if |A+A|>|A-A|. A set with this property is called an MSTD set. This paper gives explicit constructions of families of MSTD sets of integers.
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…
Let $\mathcal{A}$ be a finite set of integers, and let $h\mathcal{A}$ denote the $h$-fold sumset of $\mathcal{A}$. Let $(h\mathcal{A})^{(t)}$ be subset of $h\mathcal{A}$ consisting of all integers that have at least $t$ representations as a sum of $h$ elements of $\mathcal{A}$. The structure of the set $(h\mathcal{A})^{(t)}$ is completely determined for all $h \geq h_t$.
We present a variety of new results on finite sets A of integers for which the sumset A+A is larger than the difference set A-A, so-called MSTD (more sums than differences) sets. First we show that there is, up to affine transformation, a unique MSTD subset of {\bf Z} of size 8. Secondly, starting from some examples of size 9, we present several new constructions of infinite families of MSTD sets. Thirdly we show that for every fixed ordered pair of non-negative integers (j,k), as n -> \infty a positive proportion of the subsets of {0,1,2,...,n} satisfy |A+A| = (2n+1) - j, |A-A| = (2n+1) - 2k.
The $3k-4$ conjecture in groups $\mathbb{Z}/p\mathbb{Z}$ for $p$ prime states that if $A$ is a nonempty subset of $\mathbb{Z}/p\mathbb{Z}$ satisfying $2A\neq \mathbb{Z}/p\mathbb{Z}$ and $|2A|=2|A|+r \leq \min\{3|A|-4,\;p-r-4\}$, then $A$ is covered by an arithmetic progression of size at most $|A|+r+1$. A theorem of Serra and Zémor proves the conjecture provided $r\leq 0.0001|A|$, without any additional constraint on $|A|$. Subject to the mild additional constraint $|2A|\leq 3p/4$ (which is optimal in a sense explained in the paper), our first main result improves the bound on $r$, allowing $r…
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…
In this paper we prove new bounds for sums of convex or concave functions. Specifically, we prove that for all $A,B \subseteq \mathbb R$ finite sets, and for all $f,g$ convex or concave functions, we have $$|A + B|^{38}|f(A) + g(B)|^{38} \gtrsim |A|^{49}|B|^{49}.$$ This result can be used to obtain bounds on a number of two-variable expanders of interest, as well as to the asymmetric sum-product problem. We also adjust our technique to also prove the three-variable expansion result \[ |AB+A|\gtrsim |A|^{\frac32 +\frac3{170}}\,. \] Our methods follow a series of recent developments in the sum-p…
The set of all $\ell$-zero-sumfree subsets of $\mathbb{Z}/n\mathbb{Z}$ is a simplicial complex denoted by $Δ_{n,\ell}$ We create an algorithm via defining a set of integer partitions we call $(n,\ell)$-congruent partitions in order to compute this complex for moderately-sized parameters $n$ and $\ell$. We also theoretically determine $Δ_{n,\ell}$ for several infinite families of parameters, and compute the intersection lattices and the characteristic polynomials of the corresponding coordinate subspace arrangements.
Erdős showed that every set of $n$ positive integers contains a subset of size at least $n/(k+1)$ containing no solutions to $x_1 + \cdots + x_k = y$. We prove that the constant $1/(k+1)$ here is best possible by showing that if $(F_m)$ is a multiplicative Følner sequence in $\mathbf{N}$ then $F_m$ has no $k$-sum-free subset of size greater than $(1/(k+1)+o(1))|F_m|$. This provides a new proof and a generalisation of a recent theorem of Eberhard, Green, and Manners.
Let $d \geq 4$ be a natural number and let $A$ be a finite, non-empty subset of $\mathbb{R}^d$ such that $A$ is not contained in a translate of a hyperplane. In this setting, we show that \[ |A-A| \geq \bigg(2d - 2 + \frac{1}{d-1} \bigg) |A| - O_{d}(|A|^{1- δ}), \] for some absolute constant $δ>0$ that only depends on $d$. This provides a sharp main term, consequently answering questions of Ruzsa and Stanchescu up to an $O_{d}(|A|^{1- δ})$ error term. We also prove new lower bounds for restricted type difference sets and asymmetric sumsets in $\mathbb{R}^d$.
In this paper we show that if $A$ is a subset of the primes with positive relative density $δ$, then $A+A$ must have positive upper density $C_1δe^{-C_2(\log(1/δ))^{2/3}(\log\log(1/δ))^{1/3}}$ in $\mathbb{N}$. Our argument applies the techniques developed by Green and Green-Tao used to find arithmetic progressions in the primes, in combination with a result on sums of subsets of the multiplicative subgroup of the integers modulo $M$.
A set $A\subset \mathbb{F}_p^n$ is sum-free if $A+A$ does not intersect $A$. If $p\equiv 2 \mod 3$, the maximal size of a sum-free in $\mathbb{F}_p^n$ is known to be $(p^n+p^{n-1})/3$. We show that if a sum-free set $A\subset \mathbb{F}_p^n$ has size at least $p^n/3-p^{n-1}/6+p^{n-2}$, then there exists subspace $V<\mathbb{F}_p^n$ of co-dimension 1 such that $A$ is contained in $(p+1)/3$ cosets of $V$. For $p=5$ specifically, we show the stronger result that every sum-free set of size larger than $1.2\cdot 5^{n-1}$ has this property, thus improving on a recent theorem of Lev.
V. Bergelson and N. Hindman proved that $IP^{*}$ sets contain all possible finite sum and product of a sum subsystem of any sequence in $\mathbb{N}$. In this article, we will prove this result using Nonstandard analysis.
We present constructions of symmetric complete sum-free sets in general finite cyclic groups. It is shown that the relative sizes of the sets are dense in $[0,\frac{1}{3}]$, answering a question of Cameron, and that the number of those contained in the cyclic group of order $n$ is exponential in $n$. For primes $p$, we provide a full characterization of the symmetric complete sum-free subsets of $\mathbb{Z}_p$ of size at least $(\frac{1}{3}-c) \cdot p$, where $c>0$ is a universal constant.
A set of integers is sum-free if it contains no solution to the equation $x+y=z$. We study sum-free subsets of the set of integers $[n]=\{1,\ldots,n\}$ for which the integer $2n+1$ cannot be represented as a sum of their elements. We prove a bound of $O(2^{n/3})$ on the number of these sets, which matches, up to a multiplicative constant, the lower bound obtained by considering all subsets of $B_n = \{ \lceil \frac{2}{3}(n+1) \rceil, \ldots, n \}$. A main ingredient in the proof is a stability theorem saying that if a subset of $[n]$ of size close to $|B_n|$ contains only a few subsets that co…
We extend the concepts of sum-free sets and Sidon-sets of combinatorial number theory with the aim to provide explicit constructions for spherical designs. We call a subset $S$ of the (additive) abelian group $G$ {\it $t$-free} if for all non-negative integers $k$ and $l$ with $k+l \leq t$, the sum of $k$ (not necessarily distinct) elements of $S$ does not equal the sum of $l$ (not necessarily distinct) elements of $S$ unless $k=l$ and the two sums contain the same terms. Here we shall give asymptotic bounds for the size of a largest $t$-free set in ${\bf Z}_n$, and for $t \leq 3$ discuss how …
First, we show that the sum-free set generated by the period-doubling sequence is not $κ$-regular for any $κ\geq 2$. Next, we introduce a generalization of the period-doubling sequence, which we call the period-$k$-folding sequences. We show that the sum-free sets generated by the period-$k$-folding sequences also fail to be $κ$-regular for all $κ\geq 2$. Finally, we study the sum-free sets generated by Sturmian sequences that begin with `11', and their difference sequences.
In a recent paper \cite{Gl} A. Glibichuk proved that if $A,B$ are subsets of an arbitrary finite filed $\F_q$, such that $|A||B|>q$, then $16AB = \F_q$. We improve this to $10AB = \F_q.$
The Minkowski sum of two subsets $A$ and $B$ of a finite abelian group $G$ is defined as all pairwise sums of elements of $A$ and $B$: $A + B = \{ a + b : a \in A, b \in B \}$. The largest size of a $(k, \ell)$-sum-free set in $G$ has been of interest for many years and in the case $G = \mathbb{Z}/n\mathbb{Z}$ has recently been computed by Bajnok and Matzke. Motivated by sum-free sets of the torus, Kravitz introduces the noisy Minkowski sum of two sets, which can be thought of as discrete evaluations of these continuous sumsets. That is, given a noise set $C$, the noisy Minkowski sum is define…
For an interval [1,N] in the natural numbers, investigating subsets S of [1,N] such that |{(x,y) in S^2:x+y in S}|=0, known as sum-free sets, has attracted considerable attention. In this paper, we define r(S):=|{(x,y) in S^2: x+y in S}| and consider its behaviour as S ranges over the subsets of [1,N]. We obtain a comprehensive description of the spectrum of attainable r-values for the s-sets of [1,N], constructive existence results and structural characterizations for sets attaining extremal and near-extremal values.
A set of reals A={a_1,...,a_2} is called convex if a_{i+1} - a_i > a_i - a_{i-1} for all i. We prove, in particular, that |A-A| \gg |A|^{8/5} \log{-2/5} |A|.
A set of reals $A=\{a_1,...,a_n\}$ labeled in increasing order is called convex if there exists a continuous strictly convex function $f$ such that $f(i)=a_i$ for every $i$. Given a convex set $A$, we prove \[|A+A|\gg\frac{|A|^{14/9}}{(\log|A|)^{2/9}}.\] Sumsets of different summands and an application to a sum-product-type problem are also studied either as remarks or as theorems.
In this article we aim to develop from first principles a theory of sum sets and partial sum sets, which are defined analogously to difference sets and partial difference sets. We obtain non-existence results and characterisations. In particular, we show that any sum set must exhibit higher-order regularity and that an abelian sum set is necessarily a reversible difference set. We next develop several general construction techniques under the hypothesis that the over-riding group contains a normal subgroup of order 2. Finally, by exploiting properties of dihedral groups and Frobenius groups, s…
The following Proposition is a positive answer to a question about cancellations between permutations that arises in a model problem in the many body theory of Fermions. It concerns the mathematically rigorous implementation of the Pauli exclusion principle.
We determine the shape of all sum-free sets in $\{1,2,\ldots,n\}^2$ of size close to the maximum $\frac{3}{5}n^2$, solving a problem of Elsholtz and Rackham. We show that all such asymptotic maximum sum-free sets lie completely in the stripe $\frac{4}{5}n-o(n)\le x+y\le\frac{8}{5}n+ o(n)$. We also determine for any positive integer $p$ the maximum size of a subset $A\subseteq \{1,2,\ldots,n\}^2$ which forbids the triple $(x,y,z)$ satisfying $px+py=z$.
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}(\…
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.
A set of integers is called sum-free if it contains no triple $(x,y,z)$ of not necessarily distinct elements with $x+y=z$. In this paper, we provide a structural characterisation of sum-free subsets of $\{1,2,\ldots,n\}$ of density at least $2/5-c$, where $c$ is an absolute positive constant. As an application, we derive a stability version of Hu's Theorem [Proc. Amer. Math. Soc. 80 (1980), 711-712] about the maximum size of a union of two sum-free sets in $\{1,2,\ldots,n\}$. We then use this result to show that the number of subsets of $\{1,2,\ldots,n\}$ which can be partitioned into two sum-…
We study a combinatorial notion where given a set of lattice points one takes the set of all sums of subsets of a fixed size, and we ask if the given set comes from a convex lattice polytope whether the resulting set also comes from a convex lattice polytope. We obtain a positive result in dimension 2 and a negative result in higher dimensions. We apply this to the corner cut polyhedron.
We investigate additive properties of sets $A,$ where $A=\{a_1,a_2,\ldots ,a_k\}$ is a monotone increasing set of real numbers, and the differences of consecutive elements are all distinct. It is known that $|A+B|\geq c|A||B|^{1/2}$ for any finite set of numbers $B.$ The bound is tight up to the constant multiplier. We give a new proof to this result using bounds on crossing numbers of geometric graphs. We construct examples showing the limits of possible improvements. In particular, we show that there are arbitrarily large sets with different consecutive differences and sub-quadratic sumset s…
A tri-colored sum-free set in an abelian group $H$ is a collection of ordered triples in $H^3$, $\{(a_i,b_i,c_i)\}_{i=1}^m$, such that the equation $a_i+b_j+c_k=0$ holds if and only if $i=j=k$. Using a variant of the lemma introduced by Croot, Lev, and Pach in their breakthrough work on arithmetic-progression-free sets, we prove that the size of any tri-colored sum-free set in $\mathbb{F}_2^n$ is bounded above by $6 {n \choose \lfloor n/3 \rfloor}$. This upper bound is tight, up to a factor subexponential in $n$: there exist tri-colored sum-free sets in $\mathbb{F}_2^n$ of size greater than ${…
We study the $δ$-discretized sum-product estimates for well spaced sets. Our main result is: for a fixed $α\in(1,\frac{3}{2}]$, we prove that for any $\sim|A|^{-1}$-separated set $A\subset[1,2]$ and $δ=|A|^{-α}$, we have: $\mathcal{N}(A+A, δ)\cdot \mathcal{N}(AA, δ) \gtrsim_ε|A|δ^{-1+ε}$.
We count the ordered sum-free triplets of subsets in the group $\mathbb{Z}/p\mathbb{Z}$, i.e., the triplets $(A,B,C)$ of sets $A,B,C \subset \mathbb{Z}/p\mathbb{Z}$ for which the equation $a+b=c$ has no solution with $a\in A$, $b \in B$ and $c \in C$. Our main theorem improves on a recent result by Semchankau, Shabanov, and Shkredov using a different and simpler method. Our proof relates previous results on the number of independent sets of regular graphs by Kahn, Perarnau and Perkins, and Csikvári to produce explicit estimates on smaller order terms. We also obtain estimates for the number of…
In a recent paper, Gerbner, Patkós, Tuza and Vizer studied regular $F$-saturated graphs. One of the essential questions is given $F$, for which $n$ does a regular $n$-vertex $F$-saturated graph exist. They proved that for all sufficiently large $n$, there is a regular $K_3$-saturated graph with $n$ vertices. We extend this result to both $K_4$ and $K_5$ and prove some partial results for larger complete graphs. Using a variation of sum-free sets from additive combinatorics, we prove that for all $k \geq 2$, there is a regular $C_{2k+1}$-saturated with $n$ vertices for infinitely many $n$. Stud…
