For a set $A$, let $P(A)$ be the set of all finite subset sums of $A$. We prove that if a sequence $B=\{11\leq b_1<b_2<\cdots\}$ satisfies $b_2=3b_1+5$, $b_3=3b_2+2$ and $b_{n+1}=3b_n+4b_{n-1}$ for all $n\geq 3$, then there is a sequence of positive integers $A=\{a_1<a_2<\cdots\}$ such that $P(A)=\mathbb{N}\setminus B$. This result shows that the answer to the problem of Chen and Wu [`The inverse problem on subset sums', European. J. Combin. 34(2013), 841-845] is negative.
In this paper we show that if $A$ is a subset of Chen primes with positive relative density $α$, then $A+A$ must have positive upper density at least $cαe^{-c^\prime\log(1/α)^{2/3}(\log\log(1/α))^{1/3}}$ in the natural numbers.
Two infinite sets $A$ and $B$ of nonnegative integers are called additive complements if their sumset contains every nonnegative integer. In 1964, Danzer constructed infinite additive complements $A$ and $B$ with $A(x)B(x) = (1 + o(1))x$ as $x \rightarrow \infty$, where $A(x)$ and $B(x)$ denote the counting function of the sets $A$ and $B$, respectively. In this paper we solve a problem of Chen and Fang by extending the construction of Danzer.
The paper solves the problems of determining the asymptotics of the number of primes and the sums of functions of primes in a subset of the natural series that satisfies the conditions that the asymptotic density of the number of primes in this subset is constant and not equal to zero.
For arbitrary $c_0>0$, if $A$ is a subset of the primes less than $x$ with cardinality $δx (\log x)^{-1}$ with $δ\geq (\log x)^{-c_0}$, then there exists a positive constant $c$ such that the cardinality of $A+A$ is larger than $c\, δx (\log\log x)^{-1}$.
Let F_q be the finite field of q elements. Let H be a multiplicative subgroup of F_q^*. For a positive integer k and element b\in F_q, we give a sharp estimate for the number of k-element subsets of H which sum to b.
The $k$-subset sum problem over finite fields is a classical NP-complete problem.Motivated by coding theory applications, a more complex problem is the higher $m$-th moment $k$-subset sum problem over finite fields. We show that there is a deterministic polynomial time algorithm for the $m$-th moment $k$-subset sum problem over finite fields for each fixed $m$ when the evaluation set is the image set of a monomial or Dickson polynomial of any degree $n$. In the classical case $m=1$, this recovers previous findings.
Let A be a finite nonempty subset of an additive abelian group G, and let Σ(A) denote the set of all group elements representable as a sum of some subset of A. We prove that |Σ(A)| >= |H| + 1/64 |A H|^2 where H is the stabilizer of Σ(A). Our result implies that Σ(A) = Z/nZ for every set A of units of Z/nZ with |A| >= 8 \sqrt{n}. This consequence was first proved by Erdős and Heilbronn for n prime, and by Vu (with a weaker constant) for general n.
We study additive double character sums over two subsets of a finite field. We show that if there is a suitable rational self-map of small degree of a set $D$, then this set contains a large subset $U$ for which the standard bound on the absolute value of the character sum over $U$ and any subset $C$ (which satisfies some restrictions on its size $|C|$) can be improved. Examples of such suitable self-maps are inversion and squaring. Then we apply this new bound to trace products and sum-product equations and improve results of the first author and of Gyarmati and Sárközy.
We investigate the size of subspaces in sumsets and show two main results. First, if A is a subset of F_2^n with density at least 1/2 - o(n^{-1/2}) then A+A contains a subspace of co-dimension 1. Secondly, if A is a subset of F_2^n with density at least 1/2-o(1) then A+A contains a subspace of co-dimension o(n).
Let $S$ and $T$ be subsets of $\mathbf{F}_q^n$. We show there are subsets $S'$ of $S$ and $T'$ of $T$ such that $S+T$ is the union of $S+T'$ and $S'+T$, with $|S'| + |T'|$ bounded by $c^n$ with $c < q$. The proof relies on the method of Croot-Lev-Pach and Ellenberg-Gijswijt on the cap set problem, together with a result of Meshulam on linear spaces of low-rank matrices. The result is a modest generalization of the recent bounds on (single-colored and multi-colored) sum-free sets by the author and others.
For a nonempty finite set $A$ of positive integers, let $\gcd\left(A\right)$ denote the greatest common divisor of the elements of $A$. Let $f\left(n\right)$ and $Φ\left(n\right)$ denote, respectively, the number of subsets $A$ of $\left\{1, 2, \ldots, n\right\}$ such that $\gcd\left(A\right) = 1$ and the number of subsets $A$ of $\left\{1, 2, \ldots, n\right\}$ such that $\gcd\left(A\cup\left\{n\right\}\right) =1$. Let $D\left(n\right)$ be the divisor sum of $f\left(n\right)$. In this article, we obtain partial sums of $f\left(n\right)$, $Φ\left(n\right)$ and $D\left(n\right)$. We also obtain…
Let $\mathrm{d}(A)$ be the asymptotic density (if it exists) of a sequence of integers $A$. For any real numbers $0\leqα\leqβ\leq 1$, we solve the question of the existence of a sequence $A$ of positive integers such that $\mathrm{d}(A)=α$ and $\mathrm{d}(A+A)=β$. More generally we study the set of $k$-tuples $(\mathrm{d}(iA))_{1\leq i\leq k}$ for $A\subset \mathbb{N}$. This leads us to introduce subsets defined by diophantine constraints inside a random set of integers known as the set of ``pseudo $s$th powers''. We consider similar problems for subsets of the circle $\mathbb{R}/\mathbb{Z}$, …
We bound double sums of Kloosterman sums over a finite field ${\mathbb F}_{q}$, with one or both parameters ranging over an affine space over its prime subfield ${\mathbb F}_p \subseteq {\mathbb F}_{q} $. These are finite fields analogues of a series of recent results by various authors in finite fields and residue rings. Our results are based on recent advances in additive combinatorics in arbitrary finite field.
Let $h\geq 2$ be a positive integer. For any subset $\mathcal{A}\subset \mathbb{Z}_n$, let $h^{\wedge}\mathcal{A}$ be the set of the elements of $\mathbb{Z}_n$ which are sums of $h$ distinct elements of $\mathcal{A}$. In this paper, we obtain some new results on $4^{\wedge}\mathcal{A}$ and $5^{\wedge}\mathcal{A}$. For example, we show that if $|\mathcal{A}|\geq 0.4045n$ and $n$ is odd, then $4^{\wedge}\mathcal{A}=\mathbb{Z}_{n}$; Under some conditions, if $n$ is even and $|\mathcal{A}|$ is close to $n/4$, then $4^{\wedge}\mathcal{A}=\mathbb{Z}_{n}$.
We present two short proofs giving the best known asymptotic lower bound for the maximum element in a set of $n$ positive integers with distinct subset sums.
Let $A$ be a nonempty finite set of $k$ integers. Given a subset $B$ of $A$, the sum of all elements of $B$, denoted by $s(B)$, is called the subset sum of $B$. For a nonnegative integer $α$ ($\leq k$), let \[Σ_α (A):=\{s(B): B \subset A, |B|\geq α\}.\] Now, let $\mathcal{A}=(\underbrace{a_{1},\ldots,a_{1}}_{r_{1}~\text{copies}}, \underbrace{a_{2},\ldots,a_{2}}_{r_{2}~\text{copies}},\ldots, \underbrace{a_{k},\ldots,a_{k}}_{r_{k}~\text{copies}})$ be a finite sequence of integers with $k$ distinct terms, where $r_{i}\geq 1$ for $i=1,2,\ldots,k$. Given a subsequence $\mathcal{B}$ of $\mathcal{A}$…
Let $\BZ_p$ be the finite field of prime order $p$ and $A$ be a subset of $\BZ_p$. We prove several sharp results about the following two basic questions: (1) When can one represent zero as a sum of distinct elements of $A$ ? (2) When can one represent every element of $\BZ_p$ as a sum of distinct elements of $A$ ?
We give a new bound on the number of collinear triples for two arbitrary subsets of a finite field. This improves on existing results which rely on the Cauchy inequality. We then us this to provide a new bound on trilinear and quadrilinear exponential sums.
We prove some general estimates for exponential sums over subsets of finite fields which are definable in the language of rings. This generalizes both the classical exponential sum estimates over varieties over finite fields due to Weil, Deligne and others, and the result of Chatzidakis, van den Dries and Macintyre concerning the number of points of those definable sets. As a first application, there is no formula in the language of rings that defines for infinitely many primes an ``interval'' in Z/pZ that is neither bounded nor with bounded complement.
We develop novel techniques which allow us to prove a diverse range of results relating to subset sums and complete sequences of positive integers, including solutions to several longstanding open problems. These include: solutions to the three problems of Burr and Erdős on Ramsey complete sequences, for which Erdős later offered a combined total of \$350; analogous results for the new notion of density complete sequences; the solution to a conjecture of Alon and Erdős on the minimum number of colors needed to color the positive integers less than $n$ so that $n$ cannot be written as a monochr…
We obtain quantitative estimates for the asymptotic density of subsets of the two-dimensional integer lattice which contain only trivial solutions to an additive equation involving binary forms. In the process we develop an analogue of Vinogradov's mean value theorem applicable to binary forms.
We show that in any two-coloring of the positive integers there is a color for which the set of positive integers that can be represented as a sum of distinct elements with this color has upper logarithmic density at least $(2+\sqrt{3})/4$ and this is best possible. This answers a forty-year-old question of Erdős.
For a positive integer $h$ and a subset $A$ of a given finite abelian group, we let $hA$, $h \hat{\;} A$, and $h_{\pm}A$ denote the $h$-fold sumset, restricted sumset, and signed sumset of $A$, respectively. Here we review some of what is known and not yet known about the minimum sizes of these three types of sumsets, as well as their corresponding critical numbers. In particular, we discuss several new open direct and inverse problems.
By using a variant of Kowalski's large sieve for Frobenius in compatible systems, we obtain zero-density estimates for arguments of $\ell$-adic trace functions over finite fields with values in some algebraic subsets of the cyclotomic integers, when the monodromy groups are known. This applies in particular to hyper-Kloosterman sums and general exponential sums considered by Katz.
Let $A\subset\mathbb{N}$, $α\in(0,1)$, and for $x\in\mathbb{R}$ let $e(x):=e^{2πix}$. We set $$S_{A}(α,N):=\sum_{\substack{n\in A\n\leq N}}e(nα).$$ Recently, Lambert A'Campo proposed the following question: is there an infinite non-cofinite set $A\subset\mathbb{N}$ such that for all $α\in(0,1)$ the sum $S_{A}(α,N)$ has bounded modulus as $N\to +\infty$? In this note we show that such sets do not exist. To do so, we use a theorem by Duffin and Schaeffer on complex power series. We extend our result by proving that if the sum $S_{A}(α,N)$ is bounded in modulus on an arbitrarily small interval an…
We prove character sum estimates for additive Bohr subsets modulo a prime. These estimates are analogous to classical character sum bounds of Polya-Vinogradov and Burgess. These estimates are applied to obtain results on recurrence mod $p$ by special elements.
Let $\mathcal{A}$ be a sequence of $rk$ terms which is made up of $k$ distinct integers each appearing exactly $r$ times in $\mathcal{A}$. The sum of all terms of a subsequence of $\mathcal{A}$ is called a subsequence sum of $\mathcal{A}$. For a nonnegative integer $α\leq rk$, let $Σ_α (\mathcal{A})$ be the set of all subsequence sums of $\mathcal{A}$ that correspond to the subsequences of length $α$ or more. When $r=1$, we call the subsequence sums as subset sums and we write $Σ_α (A)$ for $Σ_α (\mathcal{A})$. In this article, using some simple combinatorial arguments, we establish optimal lo…
A sum-dominant set is a finite set $A$ of integers such that $|A+A| > |A-A|$. As a typical pair of elements contributes one sum and two differences, we expect sum-dominant sets to be rare in some sense. In 2006, however, Martin and O'Bryant showed that the proportion of sum-dominant subsets of $\{0,\dots,n\}$ is bounded below by a positive constant as $n\to\infty$. Hegarty then extended their work and showed that for any prescribed $s,d\in\mathbb{N}_0$, the proportion $ρ^{s,d}_n$ of subsets of $\{0,\dots,n\}$ that are missing exactly $s$ sums in $\{0,\dots,2n\}$ and exactly $2d$ differences in…
We generalize Burgess' results on partial Gaussian sums to arbitrary finite fields. The main ingredients are the classical method of amplification, two deep results on multiplicative energy for subsets in finite fields which are obtained respectively by the tools from additive combinatorics and geometry of numbers, and a technique of Chamizo for treating the difficulty caused by additive character. Our results include the recent works on character sums in finite fields by M.-C. Chang and S. V. Konyagin.
Balog and Wooley have recently proved that any subset $A$ of either real numbers or of a prime finite field can be decomposed into two parts $U$ and $V$, one of small additive energy and the other of small multiplicative energy. In the case of arbitrary finite fields, we obtain an analogue that under some natural restrictions for a rational function $f$ both the additive energies of $U$ and $f(V)$ are small. Our method is based on bounds of character sums which leads to the restriction $\# A > q^{1/2}$ where $q$ is the field size. The bound is optimal, up to logarithmic factors, when $\# A \ge…
Let $A \subset \mathbb R$ and $G \subset A \times A$. We prove that, for any $λ\in \mathbb R \setminus \{-1,0,1\}$, \[ \max \{|A+_G A|, |A+_G λA|, |A\cdot_G A|\} \gg |G|^{6/11}. \]
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…
A finite set $A$ of integers is square-sum-free if there is no subset of $A$ sums up to a square. In 1986, Erd\H os posed the problem of determining the largest cardinality of a square-sum-free subset of $\{1, ..., n \}$. Answering this question, we show that this maximum cardinality is of order $n^{1/3+o(1)}$.
In this paper we establish connections between covers of $\mathbb Z$ by residue classes and subset sums in a field. Suppose that $A_0=\{a_s(n_s)\}_{s=0}^k$ covers each integer at least $p$ times with the residue class $a_0(n_0)=a_0+n_0\mathbb Z$ irredundant, where $p$ is a prime not dividing any of $n_1,\ldots,n_k$. Let $m_1,\ldots,m_k\in\mathbb Z$ be relatively prime to $n_1,\ldots,n_k$ respectively. For any $c,c_1,\ldots,c_k\in\mathbb Z/p\mathbb Z$ with $c_1\cdots c_k\not=0$, we show that the set $$\bigg\{\bigg\{\sum_{s\in I}\frac{m_s}{n_s}\bigg\}:\, I\subseteq\{1,\ldots,k\} \ \mbox{and}\ \s…
Let $\left\{a_1, \dots, a_n\right\} \subset \mathbb{N}$ be a set of positive integers, $a_n$ denoting the largest element, so that for any two of the $2^n$ subsets the sum of all elements is distinct. Erdős asked whether this implies $a_n \geq c \cdot 2^n$ for some universal $c>0$. We prove, slightly extending a result of Elkies, that for any $a_1, \dots, a_n \in \mathbb{R}_{>0}$ $$ \int_{\mathbb{R}} \left( \frac{\sin{ x}}{ x} \right)^2 \prod_{i=1}^{n} \cos{( a_i x)^2} dx \geq \fracπ{2^{n}}$$ with equality if and only if all subset sums are $1-$separated. This leads to a new proof of the curre…
For a subset A of a finite abelian group G we define Sigma(A)={sum_{a\in B}a:B\subset A}. In the case that Sigma(A) has trivial stabiliser, one may deduce that the size of Sigma(A) is at least quadratic in |A|; the bound |Sigma(A)|>= |A|^{2}/64 has recently been obtained by De Vos, Goddyn, Mohar and Samal. We improve this bound to the asymptotically best possible result |Sigma(A)|>= (1/4-o(1))|A|^{2}. We also study a related problem in which A is any subset of Z_{n} with all elements of A coprime to n; it has recently been shown, by Vu, that if such a set A has the property Sigma(A) is not Z_{…
In this paper we define the $p$-density of a finite subset $D\subset\ma{N}^r$, and show that it gives a good lower bound for the $p$-adic valuation of exponential sums over finite fields of characteristic $p$. We also give an application: when $r=1$, the $p$-density is the first slope of the generic Newton polygon of the family of Artin-Schreier curves associated to polynomials with their exponents in $D$.
Let $\{a_1, . . . , a_n\}$ be a set of positive integers with $a_1 < \dots < a_n$ such that all $2^n$ subset sums are distinct. A famous conjecture by Erdős states that $a_n>c\cdot 2^n$ for some constant $c$, while the best result known to date is of the form $a_n>c\cdot 2^n/\sqrt{n}$. In this paper, we weaken the condition by requiring that only sums corresponding to subsets of size smaller than or equal to $λn$ be distinct. For this case, we derive lower and upper bounds on the smallest possible value of $a_n$.
We show that if a subset A of {1,...,N} does not contain any solutions to the equation x+y+z=3w with the variables not all equal, then A has size at most exp(-c(log N)^{1/7}) N, where c > 0 is some absolute constant. In view of Behrend's construction, this bound is of the right shape: the exponent 1/7 cannot be replaced by any constant larger than 1/2. We also establish a related result, which says that sumsets A+A+A contain long arithmetic progressions if A is a subset of {1,...,N}, or high-dimensional subspaces if A is a subset of a vector space over a finite field, even if A has density of …
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 $M$.
First we reprove two results in additive number theory due to Dombi and Chen & Wang, respectively, on the number of representations of n as the sum of two odious or evil numbers, using techniques from automata theory and logic. We also use this technique to prove a new result about the numbers represented by five summands. Furthermore, we prove some new results on the tenfold sums of the evil and odious numbers, as well as k-fold sums of similar sequences of integers, by using techniques of analytic number theory involving trigonometric sums associated with the (+-1)-characteristic sequences o…
