Let V(n) be the minimum number of monochromatic 3-term arithmetic progressions in any 2-coloring of {1,2,...,n}. We show that (1675/32768) n^2 (1+o(1)) <= V(n) <= (117/2192) n^2(1+o(1)). As a consequence, we find that V(n) is strictly greater than the corresponding number for Schur triples (which is (1/22) n^2 (1+o(1)). Additionally, we disprove the conjecture that V(n) = (1/16) n^2(1+o(1)), as well as a more general conjecture.
We show that $\sqrt{k}\cdot r^{k/2}$ is a threshold interval length where, under mild conditions, almost every $r$-coloring of an interval of longer length contains a monochromatic $k$-term arithmetic progression, while almost no $r$-coloring of an interval of shorter length contains a monochromatic $k$-term arithmetic progression.
We investigate the distributions of the number of: (1) monochromatic complete subgraphs over edgewise 2-colorings of complete graphs; and (2) monochromatic arithmetic progressions over 2-colorings of intervals, as statistical Ramsey theory questions. We present convincing evidence that both distributions are very well-approximated by the Delaporte distribution.
One of the toughest problems in Ramsey theory is to determine the existence of monochromatic arithmetic progressions in groups whose elements have been colored. We study the harder problem to not only determine the existence of monochromatic arithmetic progressions, but to also count them. We reformulate the enumeration in real algebraic geometry and then use state of the art computational methods in semidefinite programming and representation theory to derive sharp, or an explicit constant from sharp, lower bounds for the cyclic group of any order.
There are many extremely challenging problems about existence of monochromatic arithmetic progressions in colorings of groups. Many theorems hold only for abelian groups as results on non-abelian groups are often much more difficult to obtain. In this research project we do not only determine existence, but study the more general problem of counting them. We formulate the enumeration problem as a problem in real algebraic geometry and then use state of the art computational methods in semidefinite programming and representation theory to derive lower bounds for the number of monochromatic arit…
We prove a known 2-coloring of the integers $[N] := \{1,2,3,\ldots,N\}$ minimizes the number of monochromatic arithmetic 3-progressions under certain restrictions. A monochromatic arithmetic progression is a set of equally-spaced integers that are all the same color. Previous work by Parrilo, Robertson and Saracino conjectured an optimal coloring for large $N$ that involves 12 colored blocks. Here, we prove that the conjecture is optimal among anti-symmetric colorings with 12 or fewer colored blocks. We leverage a connection to the coloring of the continuous interval $[0,1]$ used by Parrilo, R…
Let N^{+}(k)= 2^{k/2} k^{3/2} f(k) and N^{-}(k)= 2^{k/2} k^{1/2} g(k) where 1=o(f(k)) and g(k)=o(1). We show that the probability of a random 2-coloring of {1,2,...,N^{+}(k)} containing a monochromatic k-term arithmetic progression approaches 1, and the probability of a random 2-coloring of {1,2,...,N^{-}(k)} containing a monochromatic k-term arithmetic progression approaches 0, for large k. This improves an upper bound due to Brown, who had established an analogous result for N^{+}(k)= 2^k log k f(k).
We determine asymptotic growth rates for lengths of monochromatic arithmetic progressions in certain automatic sequences. In particular, we look at (one-sided) fixed points of aperiodic, primitive, bijective substitutions and spin substitutions, which are generalisations of the Thue--Morse and Rudin--Shapiro substitutions, respectively. For such infinite words, we show that there exists a subsequence $\left\{d_n\right\}$ of differences along which the maximum length $A(d_n)$ of a monochromatic arithmetic progression (with fixed difference $d_n$) grows at least polynomially in $d_n$. Explicit u…
This paper is motivated by a recent result of Wolf \cite{wolf} on the minimum number of monochromatic 4-term arithmetic progressions(4-APs, for short) in $\Z_p$, where $p$ is a prime number. Wolf proved that there is a 2-coloring of $\Z_p$ with 0.000386% fewer monochromatic 4-APs than random 2-colorings; the proof is probabilistic and non-constructive. In this paper, we present an explicit and simple construction of a 2-coloring with 9.3% fewer monochromatic 4-APs than random 2-colorings. This problem leads us to consider the minimum number of monochromatic 4-APs in $\Z_n$ for general $n$. We …
In a recent paper, Harju posed three open problems concerning square-free arithmetic progressions in infinite words. In this note we solve two of them.
We investigate a restriction of Paul Erdos' well-known problem from 1936 on the discrepancy of homogeneous arithmetic progressions. We restrict our attention to a finite set S of homogeneous arithmetic progressions, and ask when the discrepancy with respect to this set is exactly 1. We answer this question when S has size four or less, and prove that the problem for general S is NP-hard, even for discrepancy 1.
In this paper, we study the rainbow Erdős-Rothschild problem with respect to 3-term arithmetic progressions. We obtain the asymptotic number of $r$-colorings of $[n]$ without rainbow 3-term arithmetic progressions, and we show that the typical colorings with this property are 2-colorings. We also prove that $[n]$ attains the maximum number of rainbow 3-term arithmetic progression-free $r$-colorings among all subsets of $[n]$. Moreover, the exact number of rainbow 3-term arithmetic progression-free $r$-colorings of $\mathbb{Z}_p$ is obtained, where $p$ is any prime and $\mathbb{Z}_p$ is the cyc…
We prove a version of Szemeredi's regularity lemma for subsets of a typical random set in F_p^n. As an application, a result on the distribution of three-term arithmetic progressions in sparse sets is discussed.
We consider two problems regarding arithmetic progressions in symmetric sets in the finite field (product space) model. First, we show that a symmetric set $S\subseteq\mathbb{Z}_q^n$ containing $|S|=μ\cdot q^n$ elements must contain at least $δ(q,μ)\cdot q^n\cdot 2^n$ arithmetic progressions $x,x+d,\ldots,x+(q-1)\cdot d$ such that the difference $d$ is restricted to lie in $\{0,1\}^n$. Second, we show that for prime $p$ a symmetric set $S\subseteq\mathbb{F}^n_p$ with $|S|=μ\cdot p^n$ elements contains at least $μ^{C(p)}\cdot p^{2n}$ arithmetic progressions of length $p$. This establishes that …
Permutations of the positive integers avoiding arithmetic progressions of length $5$ were constructed in (Davis et al, 1977), implying the existence of permutations of the integers avoiding arithmetic progressions of length $7$. We construct a permutation of the integers avoiding arithmetic progressions of length $6$. We also prove a lower bound of $\frac{1}{2}$ on the lower density of subsets of positive integers that can be permuted to avoid arithmetic progressions of length $4$, sharpening the lower bound of $\frac{1}{3}$ from (LeSaulnier and Vijay, 2011). In addition, we generalize several…
Using the algebraic structure of the Stone-Cech compactification of the integers, Furstenberg and Glasner proved that for arbitrary k, every piecewise syndetic set contains a piecewise syndetic set of k-term arithmetic progressions. We present a purely combinatorial argument which allows to derive this result directly from van der Waerden's Theorem.
We show that for every $\varepsilon>0$ there is an absolute constant $c(\varepsilon)>0$ such that the following is true. The union of any $n$ arithmetic progressions, each of length $n$, with pairwise distinct differences must consist of at least $c(\varepsilon)n^{2-\varepsilon}$ elements. We observe, by construction, that one can find $n$ arithmetic progressions, each of length $n$, with pairwise distinct differences such that the cardinality of their union is $o(n^2)$. We refer also to the non-symmetric case of $n$ arithmetic progressions, each of length $\ell$, for various regimes of $n$ an…
We show that there is a positive constant $c$ such that any graph on vertex set $[n]$ with at most $c n^2/k^2 \log k$ edges contains an independent set of order $k$ whose vertices form an arithmetic progression. We also present applications of this result to several questions in Ramsey theory.
A classical theorem of Fritz John allows one to describe a convex body, up to constants, as an ellipsoid. In this article we establish similar descriptions for generalized (i.e. multidimensional) arithmetic progressions in terms of proper (i.e. collision-free) generalized arithmetic progressions, in both torsion-free and torsion settings. We also obtain a similar characterization of iterated sumsets in arbitrary abelian groups in terms of progressions, thus strengthening and extending recent results of Szemerédi and Vu.
Carpi constructed an infinite word over a 4-letter alphabet that avoids squares in all subsequences indexed by arithmetic progressions of odd difference. We show a connection between Carpi's construction and the paperfolding words. We extend Carpi's result by constructing uncountably many words that avoid squares in arithmetic progressions of odd difference. We also construct infinite words avoiding overlaps and infinite words avoiding arbitrarily large squares in arithmetic progressions of odd difference. We use these words to construct labelings of the 2-dimensional integer lattice such that…
We give a purely combinatorial proof for a two-fold generalization of van der Waerden-Brauer's theorem and Hindman's theorem. We also give tower bounds for a finite version of it.
In this note we are interested in the problem of whether or not every increasing sequence of positive integers $x_1x_2x_3...$ with bounded gaps must contain a double 3-term arithmetic progression, i.e., three terms $x_i$, $x_j$, and $x_k$ such that $i + k = 2j$ and $x_i + x_k = 2x_j$. We consider a few variations of the problem, discuss some related properties of double arithmetic progressions, and present several results obtained by using RamseyScript, a high-level scripting language.
We show that subsets of $\mathbb{F}_q^{\infty}$ of large Fourier dimension must contain three-term arithmetic progressions. This contrasts with a construction of Shmerkin of a subset of $\mathbb{R}$ of Fourier dimension $1$ with no three-term arithmetic progressions.
We improve the quantitative estimate for Roth's theorem on three-term arithmetic progressions, showing that if $A\subset\{1,\ldots,N\}$ contains no non-trivial three-term arithmetic progressions then $\lvert A\rvert\ll N(\log\log N)^4/\log N$. By the same method we also improve the bounds in the analogous problem over $\mathbb{F}_q[t]$ and for the problem of finding long arithmetic progressions in a sumset.
We show that if $A\subset \{1,\ldots,N\}$ contains no non-trivial three-term arithmetic progressions then $\lvert A\rvert \ll N/(\log N)^{1+c}$ for some absolute constant $c>0$. In particular, this proves the first non-trivial case of a conjecture of Erdős on arithmetic progressions.
In this paper we prove: If 0 < d < 1, and p is a sufficiently large prime, then if S is a subset of Z/pZ having the least number of three-term arithmetic progressions among all subsets of Z/pZ having at least dp elements, then S has an arithmetic progression of length at least log^{1/4+o(1)} x.
Let the integers $1,\ldots,n$ be assigned colors. Szemerédi's theorem implies that if there is a dense color class then there is an arithmetic progression of length three in that color. We study the conditions on the color classes forcing totally multicolored arithmetic progressions of length 3. Let $f(n)$ be the smallest integer $k$ such that there is a coloring of $\{1, \ldots, n\}$ without totally multicolored arithmetic progressions of length three and such that each color appears on at most $k$ integers. We provide an exact value for $f(n)$ when $n$ is sufficiently large, and all extremal…
The Van der Waerden number $W(k,r)$ denotes the smallest $n$ such that whenever $[n]$ is $r$--colored there exists a monochromatic arithmetic progression of length $k$. Similarly, the Hilbert cube number $h(k,r)$ denotes the smallest $n$ such that whenever $[n]$ is $r$--colored there exists a monochromatic affine $k$--cube, that is, a set of the form$$\left\{x_0 + \sum_{b \in B} b : B \subseteq A\right\}$$ for some $|A|=k$ and $x_0 \in \mathbb{Z}$. We show the following relation between the Hilbert cube number and the Van der Waerden number. Let $k \geq 3$ be an integer. Then for every $ε>0$, …
We prove that if one has k non-intersecting arithmetic progressions of integers, with common differences 2 <= q_1,...,q_k <= x, then k < x exp((-1/6 + o(1)) sqrt(log x loglog x)). This improves a result of Szemeredi and Erdos.
We construct subsets of {1,...,N} of cardinality at least N exp(-C(log N)^{1/(k+1)}) which do not contain arithmetic progressions of length 2^k+1. This extends a result of Behrend (1946) concerning sets which do not contain aritmetic progressions of length 3.
In a recent paper, one of us posed three open problems concerning squarefree arithmetic progressions in infinite words. In this note we solve these problems and prove some additional results.
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 consider the problem of coloring $[n]={1,2,...,n}$ with $r$ colors to minimize the number of monochromatic $k$ term arithmetic progressions (or $k$-APs for short). We show how to extend colorings of $\mathbb{Z}_m$ which avoid nontrivial $k$-APs to colorings of $[n]$ by an unrolling process. In particular, by using residues to color $\mathbb{Z}_m$ we produce the best known colorings for minimizing the number of monochromatic $k$-APs for coloring with $r$ colors for several small values of $r$ and $k$.
We consider the problem of determining the maximum cardinality of a subset containing no arithmetic progressions of length $k$ in a given set of size $n$. It is proved that it is sufficient, in a certain sense, to consider the interval $[1,\dots, n]$. The study continues the work of Komlós, Sulyok, and Szemerédi.
We provide estimates for the dimensions of sets in $\mathbb{R}$ which uniformly avoid finite arithmetic progressions. More precisely, we say $F$ uniformly avoids arithmetic progressions of length $k \geq 3$ if there is an $ε>0$ such that one cannot find an arithmetic progression of length $k$ and gap length $Δ>0$ inside the $εΔ$ neighbourhood of $F$. Our main result is an explicit upper bound for the Assouad (and thus Hausdorff) dimension of such sets in terms of $k$ and $ε$. In the other direction, we provide examples of sets which uniformly avoid arithmetic progressions of a given length but…
We study arithmetic progressions in primes with common differences as small as possible. Tao and Ziegler showed that, for any $k \geq 3$ and $N$ large, there exist non-trivial $k$-term arithmetic progressions in (any positive density subset of) the primes up to $N$ with common difference $O((\log N)^{L_k})$, for an unspecified constant $L_k$. In this work we obtain this statement with the precise value $L_k = (k-1) 2^{k-2}$. This is achieved by proving a relative version of Szemerédi's theorem for narrow progressions requiring simpler pseudorandomness hypotheses in the spirit of recent work of…
We show that the hereditary discrepancy of homogeneous arithmetic progressions is lower bounded by $n^{1/O(\log \log n)}$. This bound is tight up to the constant in the exponent. Our lower bound goes via proving an exponential lower bound on the discrepancy of set systems of subcubes of the boolean cube $\{0, 1\}^d$.
Given two sets $\cA, \cB \subseteq \F_q$ of elements of the finite field $\F_q$ of $q$ elements, we show that the productset $$ \cA\cB = \{ab | a \in \cA, b \in\cB\} $$ contains an arithmetic progression of length $k \ge 3$ provided that $k<p$, where $p$ is the characteristic of $\F_q$, and $# \cA # \cB \ge 3q^{2d-2/k}$. We also consider geometric progressions in a shifted productset $\cA\cB +h$, for $f \in \F_q$, and obtain a similar result.
For an integer $b \geqslant 2$ and a set $S\subset \{0,\cdots,b-1\}$, we define the Kempner set $\mathcal{K}(S,b)$ to be the set of all non-negative integers whose base-$b$ digital expansions contain only digits from $S$. These well-studied sparse sets provide a rich setting for additive number theory, and in this paper we study various questions relating to the appearance of arithmetic progressions in these sets. In particular, for all $b$ we determine exactly the maximal length of an arithmetic progression that omits a base-$b$ digit.
We show that if a finite, large enough subset A of an arbitrary abelian group satisfies the small doubling condition |A + A| < (log |A|)^{1 - epsilon} |A|, then A must contain a three-term arithmetic progression whose terms are not all equal, and A + A must contain an arithmetic progression or a coset of a subgroup, either of which of size at least exp^[ c (log |A|)^{delta} ]. This extends analogous results obtained by Sanders and, respectively, by Croot, Laba and Sisask in the case where the group is that of the integers or a finite field.
A celebrated and deep result of Green and Tao states that the primes contain arbitrarily long arithmetic progressions. In this note I provide a straightforward argument demonstrating that the primes get arbitrarily close to arbitrarily long arithmetic progressions. The argument also applies to `large sets' in the sense of Erdős-Turán. The proof is short, completely self-contained, and aims to give a heuristic explanation of why the primes, and other large sets, possess arithmetic structure.
We study the upper tail of the number of arithmetic progressions of a given length in a random subset of {1,...,n}, establishing exponential bounds which are best possible up to constant factors in the exponent. The proof also extends to Schur triples, and, more generally, to the number of edges in random induced subhypergraphs of `almost linear' k-uniform hypergraphs.
